ECO Friendly Living USA

This article is part of our series of profiles on The Architectural League of New York’s 2024 Emerging Voices winners published in the March/April issue of AN. The full list of winners can be found here.
Spring is a crucial time to heal. For nature, spring heals by resurrecting plants, and when a flower starts to bloom, David Hill, founder of Alabama-based HILLWORKS, can sense it from miles away.
Hill has deep roots in the South, and perhaps it’s the vast green spaces that keep him there. Born and raised in Georgia, Hill was first introduced to landscapes through his grandfather’s flower nursery. Growing up within the Southern landscape and the spaces, histories, and cultures so inextricably tied to it, Hill’s affinity for the natural world only grew stronger. “I went on to study architecture at Georgia Tech, but I constantly felt myself drawn back to the landscape, gardening, and the design of outdoor spaces,” Hill shared.
And this constant push and pull between academia, traditional architecture education, and his roots in the landscape led him to found HILLWORKS, a landscape and architecture studio, in 2009.
HILLWORKS’s portfolio encapsulates the holistic shift in the design world toward environmental stewardship. In 2016, the studio collaborated on the impressive Puente Hills Park master plan, which will transform a landfill in California to create a public, sustainable setting. Visually, as well as formally, there is a seamlessness between people and landscape that previous generations neglected to see, let alone prioritize.
“I think [architects] need to be better at exploring alternatives that we wouldn’t have assumed to be an option,” Hill said. “Just like we approach a design problem with schemes and strategies, I think we need to be more rigorous to face social, environmental, and ecological challenges.”
Hill is an associate professor and architecture chair at Auburn State University, where he teaches the importance of regenerative design. Following the Emerging Voices recognition, Hill hopes to expand the HILLWORKS team and continue to integrate plants into cities.

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Copenhagen – The Swedish car manufacturer Volvo Cars cooperates with, among others, Maersk to reduce its global greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint from seaborne logistics. For its decarbonisation product ECO Delivery Ocean, Maersk substitutes fossil fuels on its ships with second generation biodiesel based on waste feedstocks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of customers’ ocean transport directly in the Ocean supply chain, i.e. without compensatory measures like offsetting.
With almost 15,000 containers under Maersk ECO Delivery Ocean, Volvo Cars will reduce GHG emissions by 28,000 tonnes within the next twelve months^*. Maersk’s ECO Delivery Ocean solution will be used for inbound ocean container transports of production material destined for Volvo Cars’ manufacturing plants based in China, Europe and the Americas, as well as spare parts distribution made globally by ocean container transports. The first ECO Delivery transports commenced in June.
Volvo Cars and Maersk have both the target to reduce their total greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2040. Sharing this ambitious pace in the decarbonisation, we are joining forces to maximise the progress towards net zero supply chains. We are delighted that Volvo Cars have selected our ECO Delivery Ocean solution, because we can reach our goals only together with our customers. These close collaborations are essential in order to deliver on our ambitious, mutual decarbonisation goals.
Renewable fuel is not the end game for removing CO2 from the world’s ocean freight needs. Yet this initiative shows that we can act now and implement solutions that achieve significant results during the wait for long-term technological alternatives. We want to spark other car makers into action as well, to increase demand for carbon efficient ocean transports and to establish renewable fuels as a mid-term solution that works. We all have a responsibility to act.
With ECO Delivery Ocean, Maersk offers its customers the opportunity to handle transports completely with certified biodiesel from waste resources for a small and fixed additional cost. The corresponding greenhouse gas savings are confirmed to the customers with a verified certificate.
^* Maersk green fuels and its supply chain are verified by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) through proof of sustainability documentation. The methodology for accounting emissions is based on Clean Cargo and GLEC (Global Logistics Emissions Council) emission factors and is certified by Smart Freight Center. We ensure auto-generated performance tracking of Maersk ECO Delivery shipments. And a Maersk ECO Delivery CO2 saving certificate will be issued. The process is audited by PwC in accordance with the International Standard of Assurance Engagements 3410 (ISAE 3410 – Assurance Engagements on Greenhouse Gas Statements), showing CO₂ savings for the scope of the Maersk ECO Delivery agreement.
A.P. Moller – Maersk is an integrated logistics company working to connect and simplify its customers’ supply chains. As a global leader in logistics services, the company operates in 130 countries and employs over 110,000 people. Maersk is aiming to reach net zero emissions by 2040 across the entire business with new technologies, new vessels, and green fuels.
By submitting this form, I agree to receive logistics related news and marketing updates from A. P. Moller-Maersk and its affiliated companies via e-mail. I understand that I can opt out of such Maersk communications at any time. To see how we process your personal data, please see our Privacy Notification.

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After 10 days in the saddle, Josh Dini, Gary McKinney and Rusty Brady rode horses along the southern rim of the McDermitt Caldera in northern Humboldt County to Sentinel Rock, where more than three dozen supporters greeted them on Tuesday afternoon.
At the summit, the trio raised prayer staffs to the sky and the collected crowd of more than 30 people celebrated the end of the group’s third annual prayer horse ride — a journey that began more than 200 miles away on the Walker River Indian Reservation in Schurz.
The prayer ride started in 2022 and honors Dini’s older brother Myron Dewey, a Paiute Shoshone filmmaker, photojournalist, activist and founder of the Indigenous media company Digital Smoke Signals, who died in a car crash in 2021. Dewey’s coverage of the Standing Rock movement against the North Dakota Access Pipeline rallied supporters to defend Indigenous territorial and cultural rights. Dini says the ride and horses — an interest he shared with his brother — keep him connected to his work as a water protector and land defender.
The prayer ride also aims to raise awareness of the effect mining has on Nevada’s Native communities.
This year’s prayer ride traveled through Yerington, Fallon, Wadsworth, Nixon, Lovelock, Winnemucca and Orovada. Along the way, the riders, walkers and runners prayed, sang and shared their story — focusing on younger tribal members — through conversations, educational demonstrations involving the horses, sweat lodge ceremonies, potluck meals and a film screening.
“We’re going to give this power back to our people who have been on reservations — this is their outlet,” McKinney said. “We’re bringing the culture back into those young adult years and showing them here’s another way [to live].”
From the summit of Sentinel Rock, Dini, a member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe; McKinney, a member of the Duck Valley Shoshone Paiute Tribes of Idaho and Nevada; and Brady, a Yomba Shoshone Tribe member, looked down on heavy machinery and early signs of the Thacker Pass lithium mine’s earthworks, where an open pit mine deeper than the length of a football field is planned.
Lithium Americas, a Canadian company, began construction on the site about 60 miles from Winnemucca in March 2023 after a series of failed legal challenges from conservationists, Indigenous communities and a local rancher.
Thacker Pass is the site of two Indigenous massacres. In 1865, according to a written record of the Snake War, Nevada cavalry volunteers murdered as many as 31 Paiutes at the location. The second massacre, according to Indigenous oral tradition, was an intertribal conflict that gave the area its Paiute name, Peehee Mu’huh, meaning “Rotten Moon.”
In July, the mine cleared another legal impediment when a panel of three 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges rejected a half-dozen arguments from opponents seeking to overturn federal land managers’ project approval.
In November, District Court Judge Miranda Du dismissed another lawsuit by tribal groups against the federal government’s permitting.
This is the first prayer ride since those rulings.
On March 14, the U.S. Department of Energy finalized plans to conditionally lend Lithium Americas up to $2.26 billion to build a lithium carbonate processing plant at Thacker Pass. The loan is the largest federal investment in a lithium mine to date.
The project has pitted environmentalists and Native Americans against the federal government’s efforts to accelerate a renewable energy transition. 
“Thacker Pass is a treasure trove of lithium — key to strengthening U.S. energy security and electrifying America,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a message posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on March 15, adding that the loan will “help level the global playing field and supercharge clean energy manufacturing nationwide.”
In addition to the federal government, General Motors is investing $650 million in the Thacker Pass Project.
“I know we don’t have the money to fight against big corporations,” Dini said. “But we still have to honor our ancestors who died here. We have to remember our prayers so we don’t forget about where we come from. And so we continue to pray.”
Despite efforts to prevent the mine, the Thacker Pass Project is proceeding. McKinney, nonetheless, remains committed to protecting the land.
“There are many, many sites like this in our territories in our ancestral lands,” he said. “This was a bad project that wants to duplicate itself so it’s necessary for us to spread that awareness to the people in a way that is good, prayerful.”
“We are not protesters,” he stressed. “We are protectors.”

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Environmental progress | Deloitte | About Deloitte  Deloitte
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From eco-minded ventures, to holidays by train – explore these wanderlust-fuelling titles
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We left guidebooks and novels out of the final cut
A good book is always transportive. Especially a good travel book – which can have you scaling mountains, traversing deserts or exploring tropical islands with the turn of every page. The best travel reads not only make us feel like we’re there with the author, but they make us feel like the journey is our own.
After a couple of years of travel starvation, we are hungrier than ever for globetrotting reading. Even though we’re starting to explore in real life once more, packing up for beach breaks and city weekends, that hunger is difficult to satisfy.
The reality is that, for most of us, there are only so many calendar days in the year for real-life travelling – especially if you’re on a 28-day holiday allowance.
And so, we’ve brought you the list of our current favourite travel reads to inspire your next adventure and satiate your burning wanderlust.
Some are snapshots of a single place, presented in first-person by an enthusiastic author. Others are compendiums of individual essays, perfect if you need more general inspiration. Some employ the idea of travel a bit more broadly, speaking about ways of movement – the journey itself – rather than the destination.
Read more:
What our best travel books are not, are guidebooks. While there are many stellar examples of guidebooks around, when choosing our favourite travel books we were looking primarily for inspirational reads, not how-to information. Our best travel books are also not novels. While many fictitious reads are full of colour and insights, we don’t quite consider them “travel books”, as such.
Finally, we looked for a mix of reads that would appeal to different travellers. Not every book on this list will be for you, of course, but that’s OK. Not every destination will be either. That’s part of the joy of discovery.
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Best: Overall
Rating: 9/10
If you want a proper adventure from your armchair, this compendium of travel articles by some of the country’s best storytellers will fit the bill. When travel writer Jessica Vincent was grounded during the pandemic she had the brainwave to pull together some of the most inspiring essays published in British media in the past two decades, with extracts from the likes of Conde Nast Traveller, National Geographic Traveller and Suitcase Magazine.
The 30 reads are short – just a few pages each – but big in scope, rushing you along the tracks of a train in Baghdad, tracking snow leopards in Ladakh or sleeping under the stars in Malawi. Destinations are deliberately skewed in favour of the world’s lesser-known destinations and champion some emerging writers, providing bitesized nibbles of places you may never have dreamed of going – until now.
This book is as transportive as they come and yet compact enough for soaking up over a few spare moments on the tube, in the bath or when you’re tucked under the covers before bed.
Best: Eco-travel read
Rating: 8.5/10
Penned by The Independent’s very own travel editor, Helen Coffey, this is a personal account of how one frequent flyer became convinced to go cold-turkey on the holiday industry’s biggest convenience: air travel. After years of zooming around on a near-weekly basis, Coffey had a revelation in 2019 when researching a story on flygskam (the Scandi concept of “flight shame”). In short, she realised quite how bad flying is for the environment.
This read traces her (not always easy) journey to becoming a frequent traveller at “zero altitude”, detailing what she’s learned so far and how she’s managed trips as diverse as the Scilly Isles and Croatia. Coffey manages to weave in the hard-hitting detail in a light manner, which means even when the book is delivering its most serious of arguments – such as the fact that polluting air travel is predicted to double by 2037 – it never feels preachy. Rather, you’ll feel inspired to make a change of your own.
Best: For family inspiration
Rating: 8/10
If you think zigzagging in a Cambodian rickshaw or sourcing dinner in Borneo sounds tricky, just imagine doing it with three young boys in tow. Kate Wicker’s funny and moving account of living her mantra, “have baby, will travel”, shows that being a parent doesn’t have to hold you back from exploring the world – in fact, it can even make your experiences richer. Kicking off with a visit to Israel and Jordan in 2000 while pregnant, then rambling through the years and destinations like Mallorca and Thailand with her growing brood of sons – Josh, Ben and Freddie – Wicker details the lessons that they learn from each place, and each other. It makes travelling the world as a family something to get excited about.
Best: For off the beaten track discovery
Rating: 8/10
Most travel books are about places people want to go. This one is different. It’s about those other, forgotten kinds of places. Places people have fled from, due to catastrophe (for example, Chernobyl), unrest (the Buffer Zone in Cyprus) or shifting politics (communist Harju fields in Estonia); places that have fallen from glory, such as industrial Detroit; and ones that nature has reclaimed, such as Amani botanical gardens in Tanzania.
Author Cal Flyn has meticulously researched the destinations and brings their stories to life through evocative writing. It can make for dark reading at times, but this book makes you realise travel and discovery is as much about the places we choose to avoid as much as it is about those we embrace.
Best: For walkers
Rating: 8/10
If you think great travel writing is all about moving through places in another person’s shoes, then you need this collection of essays from 20 writers about the pleasure of putting one foot in front of another. From bustling walks through Karachi with Kamila Shamsie, to rain-soaked treks in Germany with Jessica J Lee, every entry comes with its own unique flavour and makes you realise that this most rudimentary form of transport can be one of the most evocative. Editor Duncan Minshull, who pulled the collection together, has written three books about walking, so he knows a thing or two about it.
Best: For rail junkies
Rating: 8.5/10
Does anything really sum up the thrill of travel like a rail journey? Whether you’ve fantasised about chugging your way across Europe or boarding a carriage further afield – say, the Trans-Siberian Express towards Beijing – this account by award-winning travel writer Monisha Rajesh will bring the dream to life. Rajesh’s easy, witty writing style is a big part of the joy, including her descriptions of the (sometimes quirky) characters she meets along the way. If you like this read, you may also want to give Rajesh’s preceding book, Around India in 80 Trains, a read.
Best: Non-guidebook guidebook
Rating: 7.5/10
While we generally chose to omit guidebooks from this list, we’ve made an exception here – because it’s more of a photography book than anything else. The latest by bestselling travel writer Peter Irvine brings the islands of Scotland, big and small, to life through a collection of unexpected images. Some are snapshots of the big sights, such as the Callanish Stones – a rock formation on the Hebrides older than Stonehenge. Others are far less expected, such as a group of peat cutters or The Butty Bus – a fish and chips takeaway van on Harris.
Chapters are divided by geography. At the end of each one, Irvine lists a handful of his top recommendations of where to eat, stay and walk. But ultimately this is a book that inspires you to discover Scotland’s beautiful corners through your own lens.
If you want one book to transport you with every turn of the page, it has to be The Best British Travel Writing of the 21st Century. The fact that the writing is great is only one benefit – the digestible nature and mix of lesser-known destinations makes reading it feel like a proper adventure.
For any travellers who are conscious of our carbon impact – and that should be all of us – Zero Altitude is an eye-opener. Not only is Coffey’s writing style fun and engaging, but it packs in plenty of urgent detail on the impact of our addiction to air travel.
For the latest discounts on audiobooks, try the link below:
For an eco-friendly read, get stuck into the best plastic-free books that will help you lead a greener life
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The Best Eco-Friendly Electric Yard Equipment | Weather.com  The Weather Channel
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At Sierra magazine, in a no-paywall article, veteran investigative reporter Rebecca Burns writes on Climate-Science Deniers, Right-Wing Think Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition. Two or three paragraphs cannot do justice to her piece, but here are a couple anyway:
In order for the Biden administration to hit its goal of a 100 percent clean power grid by 2035, the nation needs to rapidly increase the rate of new wind and solar power installations. Hard-won federal policies like the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act put that target within reach. But at the local level, challenges are mounting. A report from Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law identified nearly 230 local measures across 35 states that have been enacted to restrict renewable energy development. Matthew Eisenson, the report’s author, said these could amount to a “serious obstacle” to achieving US climate goals.
Many such measures bear the finger­prints of “wind warriors” who have reemerged in dozens of local fights to stymie the energy transition at key points. For more than a decade, climate deniers and fossil fuel interests have quietly cultivated ties with these activists, equipping them with talking points, legal muscle, model ordinances, and other tools to try to subvert renewable energy adoption. Now, from coastal hamlets in New York to rural farming towns in Ohio, residents supporting wind and solar in their communities are running up against the same barrier: a chorus of disinformation, much of it tied to, or even circulated directly by, fossil-fuel-backed groups waging an existential fight to preserve the status quo. […]

It should be no surprise that the fabricators of climate science denial are still hard at work using whatever tools they can muster to undermine U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis. If that means setting up a fake grassroots citizens group pretending to be worried about offshore wind turbines’ effects on whales, as Burns points out, they’ll happily do so even if none of them ever gave a thought to whale harm when it comes to offshore drilling for gas and oil, with all the potential for spills that damage entire ecosystems. Outright lying is their chief tool. In some states, they’ve taken that directly into legislation.
For example, in Arizona, bills have passed in both Republican-controlled houses that would ban public spending on climate action and restrict data collection. One of these would have to signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the other would send the matter directly to the voters. Here’s Adam Aton at ClimateWire: 
All versions of the bill would bar any public entity — from the state to cities to universities — from advocating, planning or joining an association that promotes a sprawling list of policies. Any registered voter in the state would be able to sue a public entity to enforce it.
The legislation would prohibit spending public money to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; develop a climate plan; collect data on emissions; or seek to displace car travel with biking, walking or mass transit.
Meanwhile, from the ideological bunkers of the right, the Heritage Foundation’s manifesto-made-blueprint—Project 2025—calls for a withdrawal not only from the 2015 Paris Agreement, but also from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty. Robin Bravender and Sara Schonhardt report:
“It would basically mean we’d just be thumbing our nose at the entire world,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G who has followed global climate negotiations since they started.
“Pulling out of Paris is already bad enough because that’s the signature agreement under the framework convention,” he added. “But pulling out of the framework convention would be a higher level of insult because it would mean that we don’t think the whole topic of climate change is serious, and we don’t need to be part of any multilateral process to address it.” […]
The international response to a U.S. move to withdraw from the UNFCCC would be “overwhelmingly negative,” [former Clinton White House climate office Paul] Bledsoe added. “This could have really bad implications for U.S. security policy, economic policy and trade policy. You could see our allies begin to turn against us on these other issues.”
Trump could, as he did in when he occupied the White House, withdraw from the Paris Agreement if he were elected come November. But whether he could withdraw from the UNFCCC treaty without the Senate’s okay is a matter of legal dispute. 
On a whole range of issues, so very much depends on voters broadly ditching Republicans when they mark their ballots this fall. Name any issue—immigration, reproductive rights, the economy, national security, crime, rule of law, child labor, racism, democracy itself—and the vast majority of elected Republicans are gleeful over their dystopian proposals to stall or crush corrective measures.
This is not new. It did not start when the Trump crime family captured the GOP. And, of course, climate change is on the list. The party has long shown itself profoundly hostile to any legislation designed to confront the current and future impacts of the climate crisis. Whether they win the presidency and majorities in Congress or not, the bulk of elected Republicans—at the national, state, and local level—are determined to do everything they can to sabotage even modest attempts to ameliorate the damage we are causing to the Earth’s systems that sustain us and millions of other species. But with ever-more dire climate and biodiversity news cudgeling us on a daily basic, it’s clear that whoever wins in November, climate hawks are going to have to step up their activism. 
—MB
RELATED STORY:
TO REITERATE: LIFE-CYCLE EV EMISSIONS FALL FAR BELOW THOSE OF ICE CARS
Numerous studies have shown that fully electric vehicles emit far fewer carbon emissions over their lives than do vehicles that burn gasoline in internal combustion engines, including hybrids. Still there are critics who assert that the manufacture of EVs (especially batteries) emits much more carbon dioxide than the manufacture of internal combustion engine vehicles and hybrids and are thus worse for the environment rather than improving it. The Environmental Protection Agency is just one organization saying otherwise. 
Electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions, but still generate ample emissions associated with the manufacturing processes. To calculate the differences between life-cycle emissions of BEVs and ICE vehicles, BloombergNEF conducted an extensive 2021 study in the U.K., France, Germany, China, and the United States. It found:
The lifecycle CO₂ emissions of medium segment battery electric cars produced in 2020 and used for 250,000 km would be between 18% and 87% lower than those of equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles in the five countries included in this report. The breakeven point is far sooner in France at 25,000 km, compared to 153,000 km in China. By 2030, all countries will see this emissions breakeven point occur far earlier.

A follow-up BNEF study confirmed these results. This time researchers substituted Japan for France among the countries it evaluated. As reported by Julian Spector and Dan McCarthy at Canary Media:
The key metric here is the break-even point, which measures how long someone needs to drive an EV before its lifetime emissions sink below those of a comparable combustion-engine vehicle.
For the typical EV made in the U.S. in 2023 — think a Tesla Model 3 — that payback happens after driving just 41,000 kilometers (25,476 miles). A typical American driver would hit that in 2.1 years. By 2030, this will take half as long because the grid will have gotten considerably cleaner.
“Two years in the U.S. — that’s not that long in the life of a car,” said Corey Cantor, BNEF senior associate for electric vehicles and one of the authors of the report.

Recently, in its annual GreenerCar report, the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, gave the top award for greenest car to the Toyota Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid. This contributes to the perception that EVs aren’t more environmentally sound. There’s a hitch to this premise, however. The theoretical operational emissions ACEEE calculated for the Prius Prime and other plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) don’t match the reality of how they’re used.
A 2020 study from the International Council on Clean Transportation found that most of the miles driven in a PHEV are “extra-urban driving,” where the vehicle’s gasoline engine is used. In their surveys, ICCT researchers learned that many PHEV owners do not charge their vehicles often enough to take full advantage of the batteries, which are typically only good for 30-40 miles of range. Consequently, in real-world driving, PHEVs’ electric motors are used for only half the expected amount of time. That makes their CO₂ emissions two to four times higher than the theoretical calculations for how a PHEV could perform if it were invariably plugged in after being discharged.
In 2022, a study by Emission Analytics posited that EVs generate far more particulate emissions from friction of tires and brakes than do lighter ICE vehicles. That claim has been challenged by independent experts. As far as brake dust emissions are concerned this has been debunked because EVs use regenerative braking, which means not needing new pads for years. But particulates from tire wear is a problem, with a typical EV generating perhaps as much as 20% more particulates from tire wear as lighter ICE cars. This, however, has solutions. 
Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, founder and CEO of EV tire specialist ENSO, told James Morris at Forbes: 
“No tire will last forever, but we can make them a lot better than they are made today. Carmakers can engineer vehicles to reduce tire wear, they can make them less heavy, reduce the torque or change the size of the tire. However, while the tire on a new vehicle has been engineered with the OEM’s approval, there’s no control what happens in the aftermarket.”
”“The tire industry hasn’t moved at the pace that the electric vehicle industry needs it to,” says Erlendsson. “When tire makers sell tires to the carmakers, they make very little profit. They make almost all the profit in the aftermarket. Their version of growth is to sell more tires, so they don’t want them to last too long. Also, new cars are still a very small minority of all the vehicles we have on the planet. So even where we have high concentration of EV sales, such as Norway, they’re still only a small percentage of cars on the road.”
—MB
While global sales of electric vehicles have grown significantly, EVs and hybrids, including plug-ins, made up just over 16% of new light-duty vehicles sold in the United States in 2023, with BEVs reaching 7.6% of sales. With the exception of the Tesla Cybertruck, most of these sales are of vehicles whose external design looks pretty much like the ICE cars they are meant to replace, though the best are more aerodynamic. But creative oddities are also appearing.
Micah Toll at Electrek makes note of e-commerce retailer Alibaba’s listing of strange Chinese electric vehicles. “It’s all fun and games to laugh and enjoy the weirdness, though it’s important to remember that China actually leads the world in real electric vehicles, too,” he writes. “But we’re not here for those boring things. We’re here to see a full-size bug-eyed electric bus shaped like a fish, and at the cost of a couple car payments in the U.S.” Made by the Xuchang Zhenda Machinery company, at just 920 kg (2,029 lbs), the fish-bus weighs less than almost any two-seater, is only 4.7 meters (15 feet) long. If you buy more than one, the price is just $3,590, but a single unit will cost $9,980. However, while it’s cheap, the fish-bus only goes about 20 mph, has a battery smaller than any plug-in hybrid, and is far from street legal in the United States. 
If that doesn’t suit you, perhaps Xuchang Zhenda’s electric pumpkin carriage is more to your likely. It can be had for $1,699. But, like the fish-bus, American traffic laws mean you’ll have to leave it parked it in your driveway or just drive around in the backyard.
If, on the other hand, you want a less weird but still customized, vintage battery electric vehicle you can drive on America’s roads, Kindred Motors has three choices for you, including this:
The second motor vehicle I owned was a light green 1962 VW microbus, like that one in the photo but without the clerestory windows. Paid $1,700 for it when it was 6 years old and had about 40,000 miles on it. Slow on the hills with only 46 hp. Brrrrrrr in the winter. But converted with a fold-up bed and table, it was a cheap camper. And now I could have a fully rebuilt and upgraded electric version from Kindred. The one in the photo is clearly a pre-’68 because it’s the split van, the model on which the side entrance opens like French doors, one in each direction. The ‘68 models switched to a single sliding door.
That machine could be mine for an insane base price of $199,000. That’s more than the most expensive, luxurious, conventional, mass-produced EV. Vintage car lovers with fat wallets can also get a 1950s Chevrolet pick-up turned into an EV for just $159,000, or a 1970ish Ford Bronco for $189,000-$199,000.
Ah, no$talgia.
—MB

The Biden administration is on the cusp of implementing the tightest-ever restrictions on tailpipe pollution from cars and light trucks. These won’t be as tough as previously proposed, but they still aren’t making automakers happy.
The final proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency will be issued in the next few days. The new standards it would impose are designed to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, soot, and smog-forming pollutants. To comply with the proposed mandates, the EPA calculates that electric models would need to make up roughly two-thirds of new car and light truck sales in 2032. Last year, fully electric cars and light trucks made up 7.6% of such sales.
The new rule would mitigate health effects and also help the United States reach its commitment via the Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Transportation is currently the largest source of U.S. carbon pollution, with light-duty vehicles alone producing 20% of the nation’s carbon footprint.
The EPA retreated somewhat from its originally proposed approach by making near-term restrictions less strict while keeping to the 2032 objective. But while the relaxed rule would prevent 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere between 2026 and 2040, an analysis by consulting firm ERM says it would also allow 171 million metric tons of emissions.
David Cooke, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Bloomberg Green reporter  Jennifer A Dlouhy, “The rule doesn’t meet the moment” but does set “some guarantees around movement toward zero-emission vehicles nationwide. We will end up with more EVs on the road as a result of these rules than if we didn’t have them.”
Meanwhile, Public Citizen published a new analysis that found 10 automakers and industry groups have spent $183 million lobbying to fight new restrictions on tailpipe emissions, arguing that the stronger standards would hurt profits. That’s a hoot given that in a period of marketing heavier gas guzzlers, the top five automakers—General Motors, Ford, Stellantis, Toyota, and Honda—have earned nearly $293 billion in combined profits since 2018, paid shareholders nearly $78 billion in dividends, and bought back from investors nearly $41 billion shares of stock, according to the analysis.
Opposing air pollution rules is not new for the automakers. As the Public Citizen analysis notes:
Over the years of proposed regulations, the industry has also peddled false narratives that regulations are unnecessary and harmful. This tactic was particularly pronounced during the development of the Clean Air Act of 1970. In arguing against EPA’s emissions rules, Ford, GM, and Chrysler (now Stellantis) invested in a public misinformation campaign. GM ran ads greenwashing its minor efforts to voluntarily reduce emissions to demonstrate why regulations were not only unnecessary, but a fuel penalty that was antithetical to saving fuel. Ford claimed Congress was being too aggressive, while Chrysler’s newspaper ads called the standards, “wasteful, unnecessary, and unrealistic.”
Commenting on the new analysis, Chelsea Hodgkins, senior electric vehicle advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Program: “Automakers seem to have no shame. For decades, they’ve chosen to drag their feet on improving their cars to the maximum extent possible and instead chose to follow in Big Oil’s footsteps, to spread public misinformation and dissuade policymakers from taking strong action. These rules will save consumers money, protect the health of millions, and give us a shot at a livable future. Big Auto’s multi-million dollar lobbying efforts and corrupting influence are a direct attack on this progress and our democracy.”
—MB
Many coral reefs are dying. This one is exploding with life by Benji Jones at Vox. Globally, coral reefs, which underpin commercial fisheries and protect coastlines from storms, have declined by half since the 1950s, largely due to climate change. Spells of extreme marine heat break down the relationship between coral and a type of symbiotic algae that gives it both food and its vibrant colors. The coral turns white — a process referred to as bleaching — and can then easily starve to death. The reefs in Cambodia and in the broader East Asian region, however, appear to be bucking this trend. Surveys indicate that they haven’t declined in recent decades, perhaps because they’re more resilient to warming. Their secret to survival may ultimately help safeguard ailing reefs elsewhere. […] The secret to the reef’s survival may be in the diversity of its corals. East Asia has a huge number of coral species and a lot of genetic diversity within individual species. The more varieties of coral a reef has, the more likely it is that some of them may have slightly more or less tolerance to various stresses, such as high temperatures. During a bout of severe warming, some coral colonies may die off, but others can take their place, [said Matt Glue, a marine technical specialist at Fauna & Flora].
Many homes burned in the Texas wildfires weren’t insured, creating a steep path to recovery by Joshua Fechter at The Texas Tribune. Many Panhandle residents whose dwellings and possessions burned in the region’s ongoing wildfires may never financially recover for one simple reason: Their homes weren’t insured. “A lot of the people who have lost a home had no insurance,” Gov. Greg Abbott said at a Friday press conference. “So there are a lot of people in great need right now.” Texans pay some of the highest homeowners insurance premiums in the country. Increased risk of extreme weather events, at least partially driven by climate change, have driven up those costs. Growth in homeowners insurance rates here outpaced the rest of the nation last year, straining Texans’ ability to pay. In Texas, those without insurance are also more likely to be those who have a harder time recovering from disaster: lower-income households and rural residents. That means Texans without insurance face a steep—if not impossible—path to restore what financial well-being they had before a disaster strikes.
A Living Laboratory for Climate Takes Shape on NYC’s Governors Island by Stephen Lee at Bloomberg Green. On a small, leafy island near the Statue of Liberty, a crop of tech companies will soon fan out to install equipment and gadgets meant to make cities more sustainable. The first six pilot projects were announced for Governors Island on Monday, as part of New York City’s plan to turn the island into both a living laboratory where scientists and inventors can come tinker, and a launchpad for entrepreneurs to showcase their latest bright ideas. “Looking forward, we hope the island can be a jewel box for what a truly sustainable and adaptable urban environment can look like,” said Clare Newman, president of the Trust for Governors Island.  Central to those plans is the notion that the public should be able to see and interact with the technology. “We want to make sure that this work doesn’t happen just in labs; it doesn’t just happen in ivory towers,” said Maria Torres-Springer, New York’s deputy mayor for housing, economic development and workforce. “It happens in full view of, and in concert with, the public.” 
“Earth Protectors” Documentary Explores the Fight to Adapt to Climate Breakdown by Craig Thompson at Ecowatch. The seeds of “Earth Protectors” were planted 10 years ago, when Anna de Carbuccia began her “time shrines” art and photography project. With this undertaking, she visited various locations around the world in order to document a vanishing planet, creating works of art while connecting with communities and their local climate challenges. The filmmaker documented the process behind making her art pieces, and parallel to her art project, she met who she called “earth protectors,” seven people who are fighting and adapting to the realities of climate breakdown. These people became major characters in her documentary. “It’s about their voice, the voice of that place through them,” she said. “That story of going there, and then meeting people who will help me—they all had a different story. I was so taken, I admired so much what they were doing.” In the film, viewers visit Siberia, the Himalayas, Xcalak on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, the United States, the Peruvian Amazon and Europe. At each stop, communities are faced with a different environmental problem. In the Upper Mustang region of the Himalayas, she explores a community dealing with the devastating impact of glacial melt, which forces the entire community to leave. In the forests of Siberia and the nearby Lake Baikal, massive forest fires are fueled by drought. “Seeing these things radicalized me. It made my story bigger than my own story,” said de Carbuccia. “It’s always the same issues, and they all have different approaches, but it’s the same kind of mindset. A big underlying theme of the film is to give to the viewer a sense of how much our planet is connected and interconnected.”
Blocking renewable energy is a top state legislative priority for network of pro-fossil fuels think tanks by Dave Anderson, Keriann Conway, and Jonathan Kim. The State Policy Network (SPN) announced on its website last month that it will focus on working with state lawmakers to prevent states from adopting wind and solar power in 2024. SPN is the national organization that serves as the central hub of a network of affiliated think tanks located in all 50 states, and is funded by right-wing and corporate donors that include fossil fuel interests. The network also includes associate groups like the Donald Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute and multiple organizations backed by Charles Koch, such as Americans for Prosperity. Koch is the billionaire CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, which operates in multiple sectors of the fossil fuel industry. His Stand Together Trust contributed $5 million in 2022 to SPN-affiliated think tanks and millions more to SPN associates like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Cato Institute, according to the Center for Media & Democracy.  
U.S. Cities Could Be Capturing Billions of Gallons of Rain a Day. From Wired. Your city is a scab on the landscape: sidewalks, roads, parking lots, rooftops—the built environment repels water into sewers and then into the environment. Urban planners have been doing it for centuries, treating stormwater as a nuisance to be diverted away as quickly as possible to avoid flooding. Not only is that a waste of free water, it’s an increasingly precarious strategy, as climate change worsens droughts but also supercharges storms, dumping ever more rainfall on impervious cities. Urban areas in the United States generate an estimated 59.5 million acre-feet of stormwater runoff per year on average—equal to 53 billion gallons each day—according to a new report from the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research group specializing in water. Over the course of the year, that equates to 93 percent of total municipal and industrial water use. American urban areas couldn’t feasibly capture all of that bountiful runoff, but a combination of smarter stormwater infrastructure and “sponge city” techniques like green spaces would make urban areas far more sustainable on a warming planet.
“The colossal legacy of Hanford, which now accounts for two-thirds of all high-level radioactive waste in the country, is fraught with calamity–a lingering wreckage with little sign of being remediated anytime soon, if ever.”—Joshua Frank, in his 2022 book, “Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America”
Climate Scientists’ Claims Deserve More Scrutiny from the Media by Dennis Meredith  at Undark. When journalists write about a research advance, they often contact a scientist not involved in the work for an independent opinion of its validity. It’s good journalistic practice. But in climate science, what if there are concepts widely accepted by scientists that turn out to be of the emperor’s-new-clothes variety — that is, accepted fictions? Or, what if the truth of a claim lies beyond the expertise of climate scientists, in the realms of technology, economics, or politics? My conclusion from more than a half century of experience as a science communicator at six universities — working with both scientists and journalists — is that journalists too often accept many such claims without subjecting them to the healthy skepticism and rigorous analysis that they would of, say, claims by politicians or lawyers. […] Journalists’ failure to recognize climate scientists’ agenda means that they have put them on a pedestal, one which turns out to be a house of cards. The shortcomings of climate scientists — professional, psychological, and cultural — have led the researchers to downplay the truly dire state of the planet’s climate. This downplaying has contributed to the failure to persuade the public to support the vast revolution in the global energy system needed to avoid climate catastrophe. […] Two prime examples of emperor’s-new-clothes climate concepts promoted by scientists are the target limits on global temperature rise and the prospects for renewable energy to replace fossil fuels.
The Week in Climate Hearings: Fire Blossoms by Brad Johnson at his Hill Heat substack. Thanks to the trillion-dollar fossil-fuel juggernaut that every year pumps billions of tons of greenhouse pollution into the air and sea and hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of politicians, think tanks, media organizations, lobbyists, and lawyers in Washington D.C., the cherry trees of Washington D.C. are on track to have one of their earliest peak blooms in history this year. As the biggest wildfire in Texas history continues to smolder, Congress [held] two hearings on the growing fossil-fueled wildfire threat [last] week. Clocks across the United States (except for most of Arizona) were turned back an hour, in a collective assault on our health and safety, increasing strokes, heart attacks, cancer, depression, suicides, accidents, and medical errors. As Hill Heat reported two years ago, Daylight Saving Time is grossly misaligned with the solar day, chronically disrupting circadian clocks.
How to Maintain Hope in the Face of Climate Chaos by Elizabeth Waddington at Treehugger. It can be easier to maintain hope if we remember that we are not alone. Connections forged with others can often help us to remember that we do not need to struggle on our own. Connection and cooperation help us to cope, and boosting personal resilience—our ability to cope—can help us to make sure that we recognize and acknowledge small victories as well as setbacks and to see the positive in any situation. Hope is not the same as blind optimism, remember. Hope implies a chance that something can happen or that something can be achieved, not a certainty. Hope is fragile. Maintaining it can often be a challenge. But it is something that we can cultivate and nurture, like a seed that can grow into something so much more.
The Conservative Climate Caucus Is Nonsense by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. Every few months, a major publication will publish a story profiling Republicans who are reportedly “evolving” on climate change—meaning shifting from hard-core climate denial to an acknowledgment of objective reality. Sometimes, these pieces will report that these Republicans support a carbon tax. Others look at GOP tree-planting plans. This quarter’s version—running in both Politico and the The Wall Street Journal—focuses on another familiar topic: a caucus with the word “climate” in its name. That the House’s three-year old, 82-member Conservative Climate Caucus has virtually nothing to show for itself doesn’t much matter. There are Republicans who are saying the word “climate”; apparently, that’s newsworthy enough. […] What are members of the purportedly “growing Republican movement to engage on climate issues,” per the Journal, up to? Conservative Climate Caucus member Bill Huizenga is plotting to strike down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently finalized climate disclosure rules using the Congressional Review Act. He’s also taken $348,800 from PACs linked to energy and natural resource interests since first coming to Congress in 2008. North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry—another caucus member—similarly announced a pair of hearings to probe “this disastrous rule,” as he called it. Since his first run for Congress in 2004, McHenry has accepted $616,750 from PACs linked to the energy and natural resources sector.
Oil and Gas Companies Want You to Think They Care About Women — but It’s Just PR by Ellen Ormesher, Emily Gertz, Kathryn Clare and Cartie Werthman at DeSmog. In a video posted to Shell’s LinkedIn page, a woman named Kimberly says to the camera,“Unconscious bias shows up everywhere, in all forms, and it is more prevalent than any of us would like to admit.” In the supercut of Shell employee testimonials that follow, a woman named Jane declares that “still too often, women are expected to be grateful for the opportunity to prove themselves,” and a man named Kevin admits that “when you’re part of the majority, a lot of the time you overlook it.” Shell’s post, which bears the hashtags #InternationalWomensDay and #PoweringProgress, is the latest in a long tradition that sees the world’s fourth-largest oil and gas company pump out communications capitalizing on International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8. It’s certainly not the only oil major that uses IWD to polish up its public image. […] But this particular flavor of PR smoke and mirrors by the fossil fuel industry is especially questionable, since the evidence is growing that endemic sex discrimination is making climate change harder on women and girls than on men, particularly in countries with high levels of gender inequality.
Why We Gave Up on the Future by David Wallace-Wells at The New York Times.  In America, now, we are living at “the end of the future,” the historian Steve Fraser wrote this month in Jacobin, surveying the country’s political landscape and finding it pretty exhausted. You can see the gloom in poll after poll documenting Americans’ declining faith in their country, its politics and its future. But the phenomenon is probably more visible on the vocal margins than at the dour median, with vocal “doomers” about A.I. and climate change, long Covid and Covid vaccines, fertility levels and the “woke mind virus,” among other sources of panic. And there is now another emerging archetype: doomers about doomerism, who believe that pessimism is a kind of social poison, and that bleak visions of the future have probably already curdled our culture and its prospects, and may consign future generations to worse outcomes still. For some, hoping to jump-start a new age of technological optimism, all this pessimism looks like a maddening kind of a puzzle. The world is wealthier than it has ever been, they point out, and by many measures it is also “better,” in aggregate if not for everyone. So why are people feeling so grim about the future that they’re tempted to retreat into visions of the past? The intuitive explanations could fill a book, and do fill the endless scroll of social media: gridlocked and gerontocratic politics, yawning income inequality and the claustrophobic housing crunch, the continuing climate crisis and the unabating epidemic of gun violence and rising rates of overdose. To that list, Fraser adds some structural history and social shortfalls characteristic of what he calls “a developed country undergoing underdevelopment”: stalled life expectancy, crumbling infrastructure, the return of child labor. (He doesn’t really discuss the rollback of reproductive rights, though that is one major reason many Americans feel shoved back into the past.)

Reevaluating the Role of Fossil Gas in a Decarbonizing Grid by Steve Clemmer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Fossil gas power plants currently provide the largest source of electricity generation and capacity in the United States. To meet our climate goals and reach net zero emissions by 2050, most studies show that we need to dramatically reduce gas use for generating electricity, heating homes and businesses, and running industrial processes. But gas power plants have also played an important role in helping to maintain the overall reliability of the electricity grid by meeting peak power demands, such as on hot summer days when people turn on their air conditioners. However, as we replace fossil fuels with clean electricity for heating and transportation to meet our climate goals, these peak demands will increasingly shift to the winter in many parts of the country. In addition, recent extreme weather events have shown that gas plants aren’t as reliable as utilities and grid operators have been assuming, especially during the winter.  And this problem will only get worse as the impacts of climate change become more frequent and severe. While it’s clear we need to rapidly reduce gas generation to help limit the worst impacts of climate change, it’s less clear how much fossil gas capacity we actually need to maintain reliability in a future decarbonized grid. It’s worth delving into because it has some important implications for our clean energy future.
GREEN LINKS
People Hate Daylight Saving. Science Tells Us Why • Getting off fossil fuels is hard, but this city is doing it—building by building • Solar geoengineering proposal withdrawn at UN summit • Record-Smashing Heat in the World’s Oceans, Explained • The US Saw Record Percentages Of Heat Pump & Electric Water Heater Sales In 2023 • Arizona’s Health Department Adds Chief Heat Officer • ”Litigation terrorism”: the obscure tool that corporations are using against green laws • How China Became the World’s Leader on Renewable Energy • EPA announces stricter rules to prevent chemicals incidents • FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show • EPA’s hard-fought climate rule for cars expected next week 

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Climate change presents a fundamental threat to human health. It affects the physical environment as well as all aspects of both natural and human systems – including social and economic conditions and the functioning of health systems. It is therefore a threat multiplier, undermining and potentially reversing decades of health progress. As climatic conditions change, more frequent and intensifying weather and climate events are observed, including storms, extreme heat, floods, droughts and wildfires. These weather and climate hazards affect health both directly and indirectly, increasing the risk of deaths, noncommunicable diseases, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and health emergencies.
Climate change is also having an impact on our health workforce and infrastructure, reducing capacity to provide universal health coverage (UHC). More fundamentally, climate shocks and growing stresses such as changing temperature and precipitation patterns, drought, floods and rising sea levels degrade the environmental and social determinants of physical and mental health. All aspects of health are affected by climate change, from clean air, water and soil to food systems and livelihoods. Further delay in tackling climate change will increase health risks, undermine decades of improvements in global health, and contravene our collective commitments to ensure the human right to health for all.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) concluded that climate risks are appearing faster and will become more severe sooner than previously expected, and it will be harder to adapt with increased global heating.
It further reveals that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Despite contributing minimally to global emissions, low-income countries and small island developing states (SIDS) endure the harshest health impacts. In vulnerable regions, the death rate from extreme weather events in the last decade was 15 times higher than in less vulnerable ones.
Climate change is impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Furthermore, climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions.

Figure: An overview of climate-sensitive health risks, their exposure pathways and vulnerability factors. Climate change impacts health both directly and indirectly, and is strongly mediated by environmental, social and public health determinants.
 
Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to global warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.
WHO data indicates 2 billion people lack safe drinking water and 600 million suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with children under 5 bearing 30% of foodborne fatalities. Climate stressors heighten waterborne and foodborne disease risks. In 2020, 770 million faced hunger, predominantly in Africa and Asia. Climate change affects food availability, quality and diversity, exacerbating food and nutrition crises.
Temperature and precipitation changes enhance the spread of vector-borne diseases. Without preventive actions, deaths from such diseases, currently over 700 000 annually, may rise. Climate change induces both immediate mental health issues, like anxiety and post-traumatic stress, and long-term disorders due to factors like displacement and disrupted social cohesion.
Recent research attributes 37% of heat-related deaths to human-induced climate change. Heat-related deaths among those over 65 have risen by 70% in two decades. In 2020, 98 million more experienced food insecurity compared to the 1981–2010 average. The WHO conservatively projects 250 000 additional yearly deaths by the 2030s due to climate change impacts on diseases like malaria and coastal flooding. However, modelling challenges persist, especially around capturing risks like drought and migration pressures.
The climate crisis threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in development, global health and poverty reduction, and to further widen existing health inequalities between and within populations. It severely jeopardizes the realization of UHC in various ways, including by compounding the existing burden of disease and by exacerbating existing barriers to accessing health services, often at the times when they are most needed. Over 930 million people – around 12% of the world’s population – spend at least 10% of their household budget to pay for health care. With the poorest people largely uninsured, health shocks and stresses already currently push around 100 million people into poverty every year, with the impacts of climate change worsening this trend.
In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the longer-term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.
While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it: people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities.
Addressing climate change’s health burden underscores the equity imperative: those most responsible for emissions should bear the highest mitigation and adaptation costs, emphasizing health equity and vulnerable group prioritization.
To avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.
WHO’s response to these challenges centres around 3 main objectives:
Leadership and Raising Awareness: WHO leads in emphasizing climate change’s health implications, aiming to centralize health in climate policies, including through the UNFCCC. Partnering with major health agencies, health professionals and civil society, WHO strives to embed climate change in health priorities like UHC and target carbon neutrality by 2030.
Evidence and Monitoring: WHO, with its network of global experts, contributes global evidence summaries, provides assistance to nations in their assessments, and monitors progress. The emphasis is on deploying effective policies and enhancing access to knowledge and data.
Capacity Building and Country Support: Through WHO offices, support is given to ministries of health, focusing on collaboration across sectors, updated guidance, hands-on training, and support for project preparation and execution as well as for securing climate and health funding.  WHO leads the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH), bringing together a range of health and development partners, to support countries in achieving their commitments to climate-resilient and low carbon health systems.
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Highlighting achievements including water reuse, solar power and tree planting, Mission Produce Inc. has released its fiscal 2023 sustainability report, “Finest for the Future.” This marks the fourth annual sustainability report for the Oxnard, Calif.-based company that sources, produces and distributes fresh hass avocados.
Mission Produce says its sustainability strategy centers around three pillars: people, product and planet. 
“Every year, we strive to build on the progress we’ve made to promote a more sustainable future for generations to come,” Mission Produce CEO Steve Barnard, said in a news release. “We’ve implemented initiatives throughout our global supply chain to help us be more environmentally and socially impactful. I’m proud of the positive contributions we’ve made on our surrounding communities and the intentionality we bring to using our resources efficiently and mindfully.”

Mission Produce says its fiscal 2023 achievements include:
Click here to learn more about Mission Produce’s sustainability efforts and read the full report.
Drew Lerner, senior agricultural meteorologist and president of World Weather, will share his predictions for spring bloom and weather events that might affect production this growing season.
The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service added Quebec to its prohibited import list to prevent the spread of the European cherry fruit fly.
Continued inflation industrywide, coupled with an unfavorable exchange for growers, is making life difficult for growers and distributors of fresh fruits and vegetables from West Mexico.
With sweet onion sales accounting for 35% of the onion category, retail promotional efforts involving endcap displays, bins and cross-merchandising can increase market share, says the marketer's vice president of sales.
The Rochester, N.Y.-based grocer, which has been on a journey to reduce plastic packaging since 2019, shares its process for selecting sustainable options in the prepared foods department.
Highlighting achievements including water reuse, solar power and tree planting, Mission Produce Inc. has released its fiscal 2023 sustainability report, “Finest for the Future.”
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