Mexico’s Sheinbaum: from activist to climate scientist to presidential frontrunner Reuters
source
Blog
Summit County's sustainability goals are powered by partnerships – The Park Record
News News |
tbarnhart@parkrecord.com
An 80-megawatt solar farm that opened in Tooele County in mid-May is helping power renewable energy goals in Park City and broader Summit County.
Construction on the Elektron Solar project started in 2021 in collaboration with Rocky Mountain Power, D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) and six solar power customers — Summit County, Park City Municipal, Deer Valley Resort, Park City Mountain, Salt Lake City and Utah Valley University.
The solar farm started commercial operations on May 15, and it could provide up to 95% of the County Courthouse’s power. Sustainability Program Manager Emily Quinton said it will make a significant difference as officials strive to transition governmental operations to 100% net renewable energy within the next six years, an element of the county’slarger climate objectives.
Gradual strides have been made to reduce Summit County’s greenhouse gas emissions, such as increasing the hybrid or electrical fleet or reducing vehicle usage overall, likely an effect of the coronavirus pandemic. It appears to be an incremental shift so far.
Yet large collaborations like the Elektron Solar facility are expected to make a meaningful difference in offsetting the county’s carbon footprint.
Summit County’s government emissions peaked in 2019 over seven years between 2016 and 2022. They’ve lowered a bit since then, but it hasn’t been substantial. The solar farm will put the County Courthouse “very close” to hitting its target of net-zero energy by 2030, according to Quinton.
“We very clearly still have a lot of work to do to meet the goals that the council has set out. … We’re slowly changing behavior,” she said. “But one day a (pivotal) project that was not there, is there the next day.”
The county already had several solar panels installed on its buildings including the Utah State University extension office in Coalville and the Sheldon Richins Building in Kimball Junction.
But while a single-family home may be able to provide a significant portion of its electricity with the power that’s generated, commercial buildings are usually only able to cover about 25% with renewable energy. Quinton said it’s a common strategy for governments, universities or local businesses to install a larger, off-site project to help meet their sustainability goals.
Elektron Solar works by providing 20- and 25-year power purchase agreements under Rocky Mountain Power’s Schedule 34 for renewable energy purchases to serve the internal business operations of its six customers. The electricity that’s generated on the grid stays there until it’s needed so it’s guaranteed to go where it belongs.
The solar farm is expected to generate enough clean energy to power 19,700 homes each year, according to Environmental Protection Agency data.
“The Elektron project exemplifies Summit County’s core value of collaboration, demonstrating how renewable energy initiatives can deliver results for the environment and economy,” Summit County Council Chair Malena Stevens said in a statement. “We are proud to be part of this project that will help us meet our goals for using renewable electrical energy to power county operations.”
Quinton recognized the milestone achievement, something she said was only possible through the partnerships and initiatives Summit County has pursued in its search of becoming more eco-friendly.
Park City and Summit County are also part of the Utah Renewable Communities, or the Community Renewable Energy Agency, which is an effort to create a default net 100% renewable electricity option for Rocky Mountain Power customers in enrolled municipalities.
Communities were required to pass a resolution by December 2019 to participate and 18 places, including Oakley, Francis, Coalville, Emigration Canyon, Moab, Millcreek and Ogden, formally joined the program before the deadline closed in May 2022.
Quinton said Rocky Mountain Power should start sending some of the initial documents to the Utah Public Service Commission with the goal of having the participation ordinance adopted by the end of the year.
The program could be launched in early 2025, making renewable energy accessible to every homeowner. Rates are expected to increase between $2 and $7 a month for participants, according to the program’s website.
Still, Quinton noted the Elektron Solar project and other initiatives only address electric energy. She said officials must find solutions to offset the gas used to heat county facilities, for example.
The zero food waste by 2030 initiative led by the Park City Community Foundation’s Climate Fund would be one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Summit County. The program aims to divert food waste from landfills to processing centers that convert it into less harmful, usable products. It’s estimated that 60% of the solid waste in the landfill is food waste.
The Sustainability Office is also partnering with the Planning Department as staff work to revise the General Plan. Environmental protections were listed as top priorities during the community-wide Our Summit visioning project.
That’s also why the Sustainability Office will be involved in the community health assessment being conducted by the Summit County Health Department. Then there’s the partnership between the two interconnected offices to organize the speaker series focused on climate change and public health. It returns this fall to help promote important community dialogue.
Summit County started setting sustainability and climate goals more than 10 years ago from early recycling programs to recent investments in electric vehicle charging stations. The County Council in 2015 adopted an action plan that also considered the broader community through public transit and pedestrian access. A formal resolution was approved in 2017.
Specific goals for county operations were established in 2019: transition to net 100% renewable electrical energy, convert to hybrid or electrical vehicles with recharging infrastructure and decrease energy consumption in public and private sector buildings to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by 80% below 2014 levels by 2050.
“We want to see fast progress on these goals, but we have to realize it takes years for the process to evolve and that’s okay. These things happen at the pace of partnerships emerging,” Quinton said.
Visit summitcounty.info/elektronsolar for details about the solar farm project. Information about the Sustainability Office can be found at summitcounty.org/463/Sustainability-Office.
Now, VoiceSuite is back on the up and up, thriving in West Valley City at 3747 Parkway Blvd., where Dwyer hopes to expand his workshop into the adjacent space.
Sometimes life takes you places you didn’t anticipate. Sometimes — if you’re Jade’s Cafe owners Mason and Halle Squires — it takes you to a corner of Heber City, where you start a cafe in pursuit of dreams, and in pursuit of reflection.
Readers around Park City and Summit County make the Park Record’s work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.
Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.
Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.
Jobs
Rentals
Place A Classified
Classifieds
Place Legal Ad
Search Legal Ads
Subscribe
E-Edition
Contact Us
Newsletters
Archives
Submit an Obituary
Submit a Letter
Submit an Event
Advertise
RSS
Cookie List
Do not sell my personal information
Aspen-Snowmass
Breckenridge-Summit County
Craig-Moffatt County
Glenwood Springs-Rifle
Steamboat Springs-Routt County
Vail-Eagle Valley
Winter Park-Granby-Grand County
Printing Press Jobs
©2005 – 2024 Swift Communications, Inc.
Environmental group calls on conservancy district to halt water sales to energy industry – AOL
For premium support please call:
NEW PHILADELPHIA ‒ The FreshWater Accountability Project is calling on the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) to halt the sale of water to the oil and gas industry over environmental concerns.
The group aired its concerns at a press conference Friday in front of the Tuscarawas County Courthouse in New Philadelphia as the Conservancy Court, the MWCD's governing body, met at the courthouse. The FreshWater Accountability Project had asked to testify at the annual meeting of the Conservancy Court but was denied.
More projects: Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District plans $11 million in improvements to four parks
The organization is calling for a halt in water sales because of what it says is growing evidence of harm caused by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process used by the energy industry to extract gas and oil. The process has been used extensively in east central Ohio. The group wants sales stopped until a full assessment of current and projected impacts caused by fracking's water impacts is completed by independent experts.
"We have asked them (MWCD) to do a better job of protecting our water in the face of fracking," said Lea Harper, managing director of the organization. "I don't like to say, but I've said this many times, fracking is not as bad as I thought it would be at first. It's much worse than I could have ever imagined."
She talked about how her family planned on retiring in Guernsey County, but then she learned that fracking was planned there.
"It was not just the truck traffic and the headaches and the smell of benzene, but for us it was the heartbreak of seeing the water taken from Seneca Lake and Wills Creek, knowing that water that was taken would never glisten in the sun again, at least we hope it doesn't, because after water is fracked, there's forever chemicals, there's proprietary chemicals, there's radioactive radium 226-228, and we know that sooner or later, when there's migratory pathways under our reservoirs, that it will be very difficult if not impossible and extremely costly to ever clean it up after it's been fracked."
Over the past decade, the MWCD has spent around $160 million on projects throughout the 18-county district, including activity centers, visitors centers and improvements to campgrounds using money from oil and gas revenue.
"Someday, even the MWCD will be unable to deny the damage," Harper said. "We will continue to plead for protection and document the damage, so those who profited from fracking will be held accountable for those costs, and not the taxpayers, not the water rate payers, not the people who live here. The money is not worth it."
The FreshWater Accountability Project is calling on the MWCD to:
Continuously monitor fracking contamination incursions into stream and reservoirs.
Install additional steam gauges as needed to determine if water quality is adequately protected.
Require that no Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals be used to frack in areas near reservoirs it has leased in the region. PFAS are a health and environmental concern because they are known as forever chemicals.
Set aside all revenue gained through leases and water sales for future remediation of water and soil contamination.
Craig Butler, the conservancy district's executive director, issued a statement in response.
“We understand that some people oppose oil and gas, and we respect their right to have that view," he said. "As an organization committed to the stewardship of natural resources we go above and beyond to do our job the right way and that’s not going to change. While properly managing our natural resources and protecting the environment, we are making historic investments that benefit everyone in the region. We will always be proud of that fact.”
In a statement, Rob Brundrett, president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association, said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has been conducting water well investigations since the early 1980s. None of them have revealed groundwater quality problems due to hydraulic fracturing.
“The MWCD is just one example of how Ohio continues to benefit from the shale revolution," he said. "It has proven to be an exceptional steward of the water and mineral resources it possesses and continues to be a leader in conservation and innovation. The state has seen over $105 billion in investment by the industry since 2011. Developing natural resources and enjoying the outdoors are not mutually exclusive, a concept the MWCD continues to prove every day."
Reach Jon at 330-364-8415 or at jon.baker@timesreporter.com.
This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Conservation group urges MWCD to end water sales to energy industry
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Cisco: Driving Sustainability for Itself & Customers – Sustainability Magazine
One of the world’s largest and most successful technology companies, Cisco was founded in 1984 by a group of Stanford University computer scientists. In the nearly 40 years since, it has grown significantly and is now a multinational digital communications technology conglomerate with a net worth of more than US$202bn.
The company has grown from a small startup to a global leader in technology and networking solutions, expanding its presence globally and establishing an international reputation as a market leader, with its products and solutions widely used by businesses, governments and organisations of all sizes worldwide.
But it’s not just by being at the forefront of technological innovation that Cisco has soared. Amid the buzz of transformation and progress, Cisco is committed to sustainability, both within its own operations and those of its customers, to support a more sustainable future.
Sielen Namdar is one of those leading the charge towards this goal. Across her 25-year career and more recently as Global Head of Sustainability for Industries at Cisco, she is a driving force behind the brand’s global sustainability for industries, embodying the fusion of technology and environmental stewardship, benefiting business and the environment simultaneously.
Sielen’s vision for sustainable innovation anchors on the pivotal role Cisco plays in shaping a more inclusive and sustainable world.
As the leader of global sustainability for industries, she and her team support customers in 11 industries across the globe in their sustainability journey leveraging Cisco technologies. From utilities to manufacturing, government to healthcare and beyond, their impact is far-reaching.
“Collaborating across Cisco’s spectrum, my team works alongside the Chief Sustainability Office, Engineering Sustainability Office, business units, global regions, sales enablement, marketing and other Cisco organisations,” Sielen explains. “Together with our key strategic partners, we’re not only developing more innovative sustainability solutions with an integrated approach, but also supporting measurable outcomes for our customers.”
Sielen joined Cisco in 2018 to build and lead Cisco’s very first digital water practice from the ground up. Bringing with her two decades of experience as an industry executive in the water, transportation and energy infrastructure business — she was formerly Co-founder of Jacobs’ Smart Cities initiative — she was then asked to refine her focus on a growing and key priority: sustainability.
“The answer was a resounding yes,” she begins. “I’m a civil and environmental engineer by training and this was a fantastic way to come full circle, while bringing the power of technology to support impactful sustainability outcomes for our customers and communities.”
The work of Sielen and her team is vital to Cisco’s worldwide leadership in technology that powers the internet. Cisco’s products and solutions, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Silicon One and power over ethernet support sustainability by, for example, helping its customers reduce energy consumption.
“With technologies like generative AI quickly taking shape, we continue to see endless possibilities for technology to change lives and experiences in countless ways,” Sielen says.
“We also recognise the need to harness the power of technology ethically and responsibly as we shape and define the future alongside our customers and partners.”
Cisco’s solutions include software, networking, security, computing, collaboration, wireless and mobility, data centre, IoT, video and analytics, to name a few. The company’s holistic approach to environmental sustainability not only includes business operations but supplier engagement and also how it helps customers and communities to reduce their environmental impact.
She continues: “An important part of our strategy is helping our customers meet their sustainability goals. Cisco solutions can help improve energy and resource efficiency, enable energy management, and deliver sustainability in lifecycle management.”
“We are leveraging our scale and innovation to help ensure that our increasingly digital future is sustainable, inclusive and resilient,” Sielen says. “We are doing this by reducing emissions across our operations, supply chain and products, as well as continuing to source more renewable energy and helping customers and communities reduce their environmental impacts and adapt to a changing world.”
Cisco has established a Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions across its entire value chain by 2040.
In addition, in 2021, the Cisco Foundation committed US$100 million over 10 years to fund nonprofit grants and impact investing in climate solutions.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, as part of Cisco’s significant evolution for the better when it comes to sustainability, innovation and social responsibility, nine years ago it set an ambitious goal to positively impact a billion people by 2025. Not only has Cisco reached this colossal milestone ahead of schedule, but it has surpassed it by 100 million people.
Cisco’s extensive portfolio of digital solutions aids its customers in their sustainability journey thanks to a variety of solutions. It comprises:
And the proof is in the results. Cisco has showcased successful collaborations with prominent customers like Enel, the global Italian power utility, which partnered with Cisco to innovate on digital solutions, aiding energy decarbonisation, digitisation and decentralisation. The project has enabled visibility into Enel’s grid operations in real time and convergence of IT and Operations Technology (OT) networks designed with circularity in mind. As a result, power was saved and Enel’s renewable energy hosting capacity was increased by several gigawatts.
Scottish Power needed reliable and secure networking communications for offshore wind farm deployments. Cisco was able to create a simplified network deployment with standardised architecture designs or Cisco Validated Design (CVDs) that are modular and repeatable. Thanks to this collaboration, Scottish Power benefitted from enhanced security with end-to-end multilevel security capabilities and flexibility to scale for wind farm sizes, future services and applications.
Cisco has also deployed smart and sustainable buildings solutions for many customers as well as for Cisco’s own offices in New York City, Atlanta and Paris.
With sustainability a tall order, Sielen and the wider company of Cisco is firm in the belief that having a strong ecosystem is pivotal to success. Its host of alliance partners includes Intel, Schneider Electric, Rockwell Automation and Honeywell, among others.
“They innovate with us to drive integrated sustainability solutions, making us stronger together,” Sielen says. “We do this by collectively embedding circularity into the design of our products and making them more energy efficient — and by developing joint solutions that can power smart buildings and more sustainable infrastructure such as for manufacturing plants, smart grids, renewable energy, data centres, stadiums and EV charging stations.
“We have a strong partnership with Intel across a large portfolio of technologies and many industries including manufacturing, transportation, utilities and more. The collaboration makes us stronger together and allows us to offer integrated and innovative solutions to our customers.”
On sustainability, Intel is enabling Cisco’s product portfolio with energy controls in their processors and chipsets, including built-in accelerators, optimised power mode and telemetry features for monitoring and control of electrical consumption and carbon emissions.
Intel is also bringing AI assets running on Cisco’s edge portfolio to identify inefficiencies and recommend energy savings measures, predicting maintenance — meaning slashing unplanned downtime and extending life of assets — forecasting demand to adjust inventory levels minimising risk of over-production and improving and accelerating yield analysis, resulting in decrease in defects, less waste and improved factory output.
Sielen states: “Partnerships are paramount to Cisco’s overarching strategy and success. Our strategy is based on a partner-driven go-to-market model. In fact, about 90% of our revenue comes through partners. They serve as a cornerstone in our mission to deliver comprehensive solutions and drive meaningful impact across industries.
“By fostering strategic alliances with like-minded organisations, Cisco extends its reach, capabilities and expertise, enabling us to address complex challenges and seize emerging opportunities more effectively — and sustainability is no different.”
Regardless of her position in leadership at one of the world’s most recognisable and trusted IT brands, Sielen believes technology will play a key role in assisting companies through their sustainability transformation. This is also off the back of IDC global research which found 62% of companies believe investments in IT technologies are critical to meeting their sustainability goals.
“Cross-functional coordination is critical to the successful execution of a corporate sustainability strategy,” she says. “CIOs and IT leaders have a key role in supporting their Chief Sustainability Officers, environmental leaders, C-suites and other stakeholders. They are in a strategic position to reimagine their networks to provide a robust platform, for both IT and for operations, and to enable technology solutions that can help reduce their energy consumption and costs while transforming cross-departmental processes to achieve more sustainable outcomes.”
But there is an acknowledgement that technology can be a double-edged sword. For Sielen, this particularly applies to generative AI, due to its immense demand on electricity and water as well as data centre infrastructure. But she believes AI’s sustainability benefits have the potential to outweigh negative impact thanks to the critical data insights it provides.
Plenty are established in or beginning to leverage technology to accelerate their sustainability journey, but, for CIOs who may be intimidated by the prospect, Sielen is quick to urge them to get started, sharing how it’s paramount to get the ball rolling. Cisco has even written a white paper on the topic.
“It’s important to start and get educated,” she declares. “What are the sustainability goals or commitments of your organisation? What are the timelines? You then need to familiarise yourself with rapidly developing stakeholder demands and the regulatory landscape.”
From there she encourages exploring public funding opportunities and learning from peers with more mature sustainability strategies. It is then important to enable visibility as well as aligning and collaborating with internal stakeholders to develop an integrated sustainability roadmap for the organisation.
Finally, Sielen showcases how executing the programme is the most important step of all.
“IT has the opportunity to make itself more sustainable — such as leveraging real-time energy management platforms and modernising data centres — and also support operations and line of business in their sustainability journey.”
This will continue to be a main focus for Sielen, helping Cisco customers — and wider industries, as a result — build speed and scale in their sustainability journey. Continued collaboration with industry and sustainability teams and strategic alliances will accelerate delivering leading-edge technology solutions that support businesses to achieve their sustainability goals.
She continues: “Our teams will continue to integrate the latest technologies, such as AI, into our sustainability solutions to ensure that our offerings are not only innovative but also help achieve the outcomes that our customers are looking for at a much faster pace.
“Climate change will continue to progress with more extreme weather patterns emerging. And organisations will feel these impacts in their daily operations and supply chains. There would be more pressure from stakeholders and consumers, especially the younger generation, for more sustainable practices and there will be a move towards more ‘regenerative’ approaches compared to ‘do less harm’.
“The transition towards sustainability is already under way, driven by growing demands from stakeholders and consumers across various sectors. This momentum is unstoppable, regardless of the prevailing political environment.”
**************
Make sure you check out the latest edition of Sustainability Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series – Sustainability LIVE 2024
**************
Sustainability Magazine is a BizClik brand
Sustainability Magazine connects the leading sustainability and ESG executives of the world's largest brands. Our platform serves as a digital hub for connecting industry leaders, covering a wide range of services including media and advertising, events, research reports, demand generation, information, and data services. With our comprehensive approach, we strive to provide timely and valuable insights into sustainable practices, fostering innovation and collaboration within the sustainability community. Join us today and shape a sustainable future for generations to come.
A Slush Fund for Radical Protesters? – City Journal
The Biden administration’s massive program of “environmental justice” grants appears designed to empower extremist groups.
The profusion of identical green tents at this spring’s anti-Israel protests struck many as odd. “Why is everybody’s tent the same?,” asked New York mayor Eric Adams. Like others, the mayor suspected “a well-concerted organizing effort” driving the protests. More recent reporting shows a concerted push behind the Gaza protest movement. But it is not as simple as a single organization secretly rallying protesters or buying tents. Instead, the movement’s most determined activists represent a network of loosely linked far-left groups. Some are openly affiliated with well-known progressive nonprofits; others work in the shadows.
The movement also draws on diverse but generous sources of financial backing. Those funding streams may soon be augmented by the federal government. As I chronicled last year in a Manhattan Institute report, “The Big Squeeze: How Biden’s Environmental Justice Agenda Hurts the Economy and the Environment,” the administration’s massive program of environmental justice grants seems designed to prioritize the funding of highly ideological local groups. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarks $3 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” intended for local nonprofits. Today, hundreds of far-left political groups include language about environmental issues and “climate justice” in their mission statements. If just a fraction of planned grants flows to such groups, the effect will be a gusher of new funding for radical causes.
As the Gaza protests spread across U.S. college campuses, many observers noted an eerie uniformity among them. From one campus to the next, protesters operated in disciplined cadres, keeping their faces covered and using identical rote phrases as they refused to talk with reporters. The Atlantic noted the strangeness of seeing elite college students “chanting like automatons.” Students held up keffiyeh scarves or umbrellas to block the view of prying cameras and linked arms to halt the movements of outsiders. At Columbia University and elsewhere, protesters formed “liberated zones,” from which “Zionists” were excluded. Around the edges of the encampments, the more militaristic activists donned helmets and goggles and carried crude weapons, apparently eager to mix it up with police or counter-protesters. We’ve seen these tactics before—notably during the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, when full-time agitators helped ignite riots, set up a police-free (and violence-plagued) zone in Seattle, and laid nightly siege to Portland, Oregon’s federal courthouse.
In a remarkable work of reporting, Park MacDougald recently traced the tangled roots of organizations backing pro-jihad protests, both on and off campuses. These include Antifa and other networks of anonymous anarchists, along with “various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition,” MacDougald writes. Higher up the food chain, we find groups openly supported by America’s growing class of super-rich tech execs or the anti-capitalist heirs of great fortunes. For example, retired tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who is married to Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, funds The People’s Forum, a lavish Manhattan resource center for far-left groups. As the Columbia protests intensified, the center urged members to head uptown to “support our students.” Following the money trail of other protest groups, MacDougald finds connections to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and—surprising no one—the George Soros-backed Tides Foundation.
Of course, the current wave of anti-Israel protests also involves alliances with pro-Hamas organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Last November, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified to the House Ways and Means Committee that SJP and similar groups have deep ties to global terrorist organizations, including Hamas.
For many keffiyeh-wearing protestors, however, a recently professed concern for Palestinians is just the latest in a long list of causes they believe justify taking over streets and college quads. In Unherd, Mary Harrington dubs this medley of political beliefs the “omnicause,” writing that “all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one.” Today’s leftist activists share an interlocking worldview that sees racism, income inequality, trans intolerance, climate change, alleged police violence, and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts all as products of capitalism and “colonialism.” Therefore, the stated rationale for any individual protest is a stand-in for the real battle: attacking Western society and its institutions.
In the U.S., this type of general-purpose uprising goes back at least to the riots at the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. In those protests, mainstream liberal factions—including labor unions and environmentalists—were joined by “black bloc” anarchists and other radicals eager to engage in “direct action” against police. That pattern—relatively moderate demonstrators providing a friendly envelope for hard-core disruptors—formed the template for many later protests: the Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2011, demonstrations following the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, 2016’s Standing Rock anti-pipeline movement, and of course, the calamitous summer of 2020.
These uprisings were not entirely spontaneous. In some cases, activists spend months planning mass actions—for example, against economic summits or political conventions—and can recruit street fighters from across the country. In others, an event, such as George Floyd’s death, sparks popular protests involving neophyte demonstrators. Those attract far-left activists, who swoop in to organize and expand the struggle, often tilting it toward more radical action.
That has certainly been the case at the college Gaza-paloozas. At Columbia, the New York Times spotted a woman old enough to be a student’s grandmother in the thick of the action as protesters barricaded that school’s Hamilton Hall. The woman was 63-year-old Lisa Fithian, a lifetime activist, who Portland’s alternative weekly Street Roots approvingly calls “a trainer of mass rebellion.” A counter-protester trying to block the pro-Hamas demonstrators told NBC News, “She was right in the middle of it, instructing them how to better set up the barriers.” Fithian told the Times she’d been invited to train students in protest safety and “general logistics.” She claims to have taken part in almost every major U.S. protest movement going back to the 1999 “Battle in Seattle.”
America’s radical network has plenty of Lisa Fithians, with the time and resources to travel the country educating newcomers about the “logistics” of disruptive protests. And these activists appear to have played key roles in the college occupations. The New York City Police Department says nearly half the demonstrators arrested on the Columbia and City University of New York (CUNY) campuses on April 30 were not affiliated with the schools. One hooded Hamilton Hall occupier—photographed scuffling with a Columbia custodian before getting arrested—turned out to be 40-year-old James Carlson, heir to a large advertising fortune. According to the New York Post, Carlson lives in a $2.3 million Park Slope townhouse and has a long rap sheet. For example, in 2005, he was arrested in San Francisco during the violent “West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization and March Against the G8.” (Those charges were dropped.)
For a quarter-century now, Antifa and other anarchist networks have worked to refine tactics and share lessons following each major action. At Columbia, UCLA, and other schools, authorities found printouts of a “Do-It Yourself Occupation Guide” and similar documents. The young campus radicals are eager to learn from their more experienced elders. And, like the high-achieving students they are, they follow directions carefully. MacDougald asked Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, about the mystery of the identical tents. There was no need for a central group to distribute hundreds of tents, Shideler said. Instead, “the organizers told [students] to buy a tent, and sent around a Google Doc with a link to that specific tent on Amazon. So they all went out and bought the same tent.”
In other words, America’s radical class has gotten very skilled at recruiting and instructing new activists—even from among the ranks of elite college students with a good deal to lose. How much more could this movement accomplish with hundreds of millions in federal dollars flooding activist groups around the country?
From its first week in office, the Biden administration has trumpeted its goal to funnel more environmental spending toward “disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized,” partly by issuing grants to grassroots organizations. Previous environmental justice (EJ) grant programs were small in scope. But, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, a huge pool of grant money became available. EPA administrator Michael Regan told reporters, “We’re going from tens of thousands of dollars to developing and designing a program that will distribute billions.”
More than a year and a half later, it remains hard to nail down just where the Biden administration’s billions in EJ grants will wind up. Money is being distributed through a confusing variety of programs, and the process of identifying recipients is ongoing. To help outsource the job of sifting through proposals, the EPA last year designated 11 institutions as “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmakers.” These groups are empowered to make subgrants directly to community organizations, under streamlined EPA oversight. In all, the Biden administration has entrusted these outfits with distributing a staggering $600 million in funding. The money is expected to start flowing this summer.
The EPA’s grantmakers include a number of educational institutions and left-leaning nonprofits. For example, the EPA chose Fordham University as its lead grantmaker in the New York region. Fordham, in turn, lists as partners two nonprofits that oppose immigration enforcement. (One, the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, states on its website: “NJAIJ believes in the human right to migrate, regardless of citizenship or political status.”) Neither group claims expertise in environmental issues. Given that the IRA’s eligibility requirements for EJ grants are extremely vague, however, perhaps that’s not a problem. Almost any activity that could help “spur economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities” (in the words of Biden’s EJ executive order) might qualify.
Perhaps the most prominent—and problematic—EPA grantmaker is the Berkeley, California-based Climate Justice Alliance. The CJA is a consortium of mostly far-left activist groups. It describes its mission as working for “regenerative economic solutions and ecological justice—under a framework that challenges capitalism and both white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy.” The group is a vigorous proponent of the omnicause, embracing almost every left-wing concern as a manifestation of climate change. For example, the CJA website proclaims: “The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.” MacDougald notes that the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, one of CJA’s affiliated groups, “organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested.”
The CJA website also includes a section dedicated to the cause known as Stop Cop City. It refers to an effort to halt the construction of an 85-acre police and firefighter training center outside Atlanta. Rag-tag activists from around the country have gathered around the facility since 2021. They have repeatedly battled with police—sometimes with fireworks and Molotov cocktails—and used bolt cutters to enter the site and torch construction equipment. (CJA’s Stop Cop City page features a cartoon illustration of three childlike activists; one brandishes bolt cutters.) The group also backs a legal defense fund for activists arrested in attacks on the training center or in other protests. For those looking for more inspiration, CJA links to an interview with former Black Panther and self-described revolutionary Angela Davis.
The Alliance is not an ideological outlier in Biden’s EJ coalition. On the contrary, when the White House assembled its White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), a panel of outside experts meant to provide “horizon-expanding EJ advice and recommendations,” it chose CJA co-chair Elizabeth Yeampierre to help lead the committee. Like other members of the panel, she sees environmental issues through an ideological, not a scientific, lens. “Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery,” Yeampierre told Yale Environment 360. As a group, radical EJ activists tend not to focus on pragmatic ways to reduce pollution and carbon emissions; for them, the real goal is overturning what they see as an exploitative economic and political system. Since these are the voices the White House chose to help shape its EJ policies, we can assume this worldview will dominate grantmaking decisions.
In February 2023, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, along with fellow committee member Pat Fallon, wrote to EPA administrator Regan asking for more information on the EPA’s grant programs. They noted that the EPA’s own studies of EJ grants issued in previous years showed sloppy supervision. According to an EPA report, an earlier version of the program funded projects that did “not logically lead to the desired environmental and/or public health [result].” Without better oversight and more clearly defined goals, the congressmen wrote, the EPA’s EJ grant machine risks becoming simply a “slush fund for far-left organizations.”
Since then, the administration has done little to reassure skeptics. To the contrary, the EPA has put at least one far-left organization—CJA—in charge of distributing $50 million in grant money. No doubt, many of the EPA grants will go to worthwhile projects. But money is fungible. A group that gets a large grant to, say, clean up dirty parks or teach children about recycling will also be able to hire more staff and divert more resources to political action.
With graduation behind them, most of the anti-Israel college protesters have stowed away their keffiyehs and moved on to summer vacations or internships. But the peripatetic activists who helped guide and intensify those uprisings are doubtless already planning their next actions. After all, two political conventions are looming. This fall, the college protests will likely flare up again, though by then perhaps focused on a different facet of the omnicause. And, with hundreds of millions in fresh funding flowing through the activist ecosystem, the groups that quietly nurture extremists—like those who firebombed “Cop City,” or who chant “Intifada Revolution!,” or who block bridges in the name of “climate”—will be more emboldened than ever.
James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the former editor of Popular Mechanics.
Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images
City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).
–
–
–
–
–
Copyright © 2024 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2024 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
EIN #13-2912529
–
–
–
Why your electric car is nowhere near as green as you think – Daily Mail
By Ross Clark
|
2.1k
View
comments
It’s the pin-up of the Net Zero cause, set to decarbonise personal transportation and speed us all into a glorious green future.
Indeed, under current Government plans, electric will be the only kind of new car we will be allowed to buy after 2035. And even before that, in 2030, the sale of purely petrol or diesel cars will be banned, with hybrids the only fuel-driven option available.
Just this week, Rishi Sunak announced that Tata Motors — which owns Jaguar Land Rover — will invest £4 billion in a new electric car battery factory in Somerset in order to power the incoming fleet of e-vehicles.
But is the electric car really as green as it appears?
True, pure electric cars don’t have exhaust pipes, so, unlike petrol and diesel models, they don’t spew out toxic gases as they are driven.
Your electric car is not as green as you think, as there are hidden eco-pitfalls
But that doesn’t make them ‘zero-emission vehicles’ — as they are sometimes mistakenly called — not by a long way.
So where do they truly score — and where do they fall down — when it comes to their environmental credentials?
How power station emissions are key
An electric car is only as clean as the electricity used to charge it and, in 2022 — the latest year for which official figures are available — Britain still derived 40.3 per cent of its electricity from fossil fuels.
A further 10.6 per cent came from ‘thermal renewables’, typically industrial power stations that burn wood chips harvested from forests, mostly in the U.S. While the Government likes to call this ‘zero carbon’ energy, wood-chip power stations spew out large quantities of carbon dioxide.
As for genuine renewables — wind, solar and hydro — they accounted for just 30.4 per cent of electricity generation. The Government clearly has its work cut out to meet the 2035 deadline for eliminating fossil fuels from the national grid because we are still nowhere near solving the problem of intermittency — what to do when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
All the possible solutions — massive battery storage, or hydrogen production — look like being fantastically expensive. For now, driving an electric car simply displaces carbon emissions from roads to distant power stations.
It takes more carbon to make an EV . . .
An electric car is only as clean as the electricity used to charge it and, in 2022 — the latest year for which official figures are available — Britain still derived 40.3 per cent of its electricity from fossil fuel (File image)
Startlingly, making an electric car typically involves 40 per cent more carbon emissions than producing a petrol or diesel car. This is because the vehicles’ batteries are composed of rare metals that have to be laboriously mined in large quantities.
Given that manufacturing emissions make up a large part of a vehicle’s ‘whole-life’ emissions, electric cars look significantly less environmentally friendly than they first appear.
There have been various efforts to estimate the ‘whole-life’ emissions of electric cars and to answer the fundamental question: how far do you have to drive before an electric car can truly be said to have lower lifetime emissions than a petrol equivalent?
The Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. estimates that an electric car in Norway — where 96 per cent of electricity comes from renewable hydropower — would need to be driven just 8,400 miles before ‘breaking even’. But in the U.S., where 60 per cent of power generation is based on fossil fuels, the figure rises to 13,500 miles.
However, if all the electricity used to power a car comes from coal — China and Poland, for example, have large numbers of coal power stations — you would need to drive 78,700 miles before your electric car’s carbon ‘budget’ broke even.
Matters are confused by the fact that the manufacture of some electric cars involves the production of more carbon emissions than others.
A comparison between a Volvo-owned Polestar electric and a diesel Volvo XC40 concluded that making the former involved 24 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent — 70 per cent higher than the 14 tonnes of carbon dioxide involved in the manufacture of the latter.
This meant the carbon break-even point occurred typically around 48,500 miles.
But Volkswagen’s estimates for the carbon break-even point of its electric cars are even higher, with the figure for an e-Golf put at 77,000 miles.
Because of their limited range on a full-charge, most electric cars are used as runabouts in towns and cities, and so will take a long time to reach their ‘whole-life’ emissions milestone.
. . . they produce more particulates . . .
Carbon emissions aren’t everything, even if the Government — along with environmental pressure groups such as Just Stop Oil — often behave as though they are.
Electric cars have regenerative braking, which involves the motor working in reverse and reduces the role of brake pads. But they are also heavier than petrol equivalents, which means more wear on tyres and more particulate emissions (File image)
One big problem with pollution in cities is PM2.5s, particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, that can penetrate deep into the lungs and which have been linked to heart disease. The good news is that PM2.5 pollution has been reduced over the past half century thanks to fewer coal fires and cleaner cars.
But will electric cars help to reduce PM2.5 pollution further? There is little hope of that. A study by consultancy firm Emissions Analytics concludes that modern petrol engines are so efficient that they are responsible for only a tiny proportion of overall PM2.5 pollution — nearly 2,000 times as much comes from vehicle brakes and tyres.
Electric cars have regenerative braking, which involves the motor working in reverse and reduces the role of brake pads. But they are also heavier than petrol equivalents, which means more wear on tyres and more particulate emissions.
A paper by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2020 concluded that, while lighter electric vehicles emit 11-13 per cent fewer PM2.5s than their petrol-driven equivalents, the situation is reversed when it comes to heavier cars. They emit 3-8 per cent more PM2.5s than petrol equivalents.
. . . and cause more pothole damage
According to a recent study using University of Leeds data, a typical electric car puts 2.24 times as much stress on the road surface as an equivalent petrol car.
While this might not matter too much on motorways, which are constructed with the heaviest goods vehicles in mind, it matters a great deal on minor roads.
More stress means more potholes and more damage to bridges, culverts and other related structures. There is not just a financial price to pay for this — there are carbon emissions associated with the production of asphalt — not least because the tar which is used to bind stones together comes from oil wells.
The real price of rare metals in EV batteries
And then there’s the issue of rare-metal mining. A typical battery requires 8kg of lithium, 35kg of manganese and 6-12kg of cobalt, all of which have to be mined.
There are particular concerns with cobalt, because 60-70 per cent of it comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
And 15 per cent of the cobalt used in making electric car batteries is produced by up to 200,000 so-called ‘artisanal miners’. This may make them sound terribly middle class, but the truth is that they are, in fact, casually employed workers with few rights and little safety legislation to protect them.
To make matters worse, many of them are children.
Besides the human cost, there is also an environmental one — though lax monitoring standards in the DRC makes the extent of this difficult to quantify.
So what’s the answer
If driven far enough, electric cars can help to reduce carbon emissions — though often they won’t. Lightly driven, urban runabouts may well be responsible for more carbon emissions than their petrol equivalents. Even in the most favourable analysis, electric cars are nowhere near carbon zero and won’t be until we have a fully decarbonised electricity grid, as well as decarbonised steel, plastics and mining industries — and that is a very long way off.
By 2035, when we will all have to go electric if we buy a new car, there is virtually zero chance that an electric car will be a genuine zero-carbon form of transport — yet Government policy continues to behave as though it is.
n Ross Clark is the author of Not Zero: How An Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (And Won’t Even Save The Planet).
Shocking new footage emerges of huge wooden ‘shantytown’ built in Democrat-run city whose name is byword for crime and urban decay
Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
Florida Senator Rubio Warns Abortion Pill Harms Environment – West Orlando News
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is warning that the abortion pill potentially harms the environment, and he joined other Republicans to ask if government research has been done on the environmental effects.
Democratic President Joe Biden’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deregulated mifepristone, allowing pregnant women to receive this chemical abortion drug by mail delivery, without an in-person doctor visit.
According to Senator Rubio and the other Republicans, the number of abortions using mifepristone has grown dramatically since then and the increased use and disposal of mifepristone may increase levels of harmful chemicals in our water system.
“Mifepristone is an orally ingested pill and the first of two drugs taken to induce a chemical abortion,” the Republican letter explained. “The drug blocks progesterone, a hormone necessary to support pregnancy, tragically killing the unborn child. A second drug is taken 24 to 48 hours later to induce contractions and expel the dead unborn child. Because chemical abortions are primarily self-induced and performed at home, the blood and placental tissue containing mifepristone’s active metabolites are flushed into wastewater systems along with the fetal remains of the unborn child.”
Senator Rubio joined Oklahoma Republican Representative Josh Brecheen and colleagues by sending a letter to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Michael Regan inquiring if the agency has conducted research on the environmental effects of mifepristone.
“Environmental protection efforts are necessary to counter the potential harm that chemical abortion drugs are creating for our people, wildlife, and ecosystems,” the Republicans wrote in the letter. “The American people deserve to know the negative effects caused by chemical abortion drugs.”
Given the increase in mifepristone use, the Republicans asked how the EPA plans to ensure the safety of waterways and drinking water, and asked about negative health effects for humans associated with exposure to mifepristone and fetal remains in drinking water. The members of Congress also asked how aquatic species are affected by exposure to mifepristone and fetal remains in our waterways.
Senator Rubio and Rep. Brecheen were joined by Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and U.S. Representatives Matt Rosendale, Alex Mooney, Paul Gosar, Gus Bilirakis, Barry Moore, Debbie Lesko, Jeff Duncan, and Jim Banks.
Read the full letter from Florida Senator Marco Rubio and other congressional Republicans to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Michael Regan on the abortion pill and potential harm to the environment:
RubioRepublicans_abortionpillenvironmentletter
DOE selects two S&T students for summer program at Argonne National Laboratory – Missouri S&T News and Research
Ginger Ramirez, left, and Kaylee Denbo stand near the entrance of Argonne National Laboratory. Photo courtesy of Ramirez.
Kaylee Denbo and Ginger Ramirez, environmental engineering students at Missouri S&T, may not be on the university’s campus much this summer, but their absence doesn’t mean they will stop learning important skills for their future profession.
Both students were awarded Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships from the U.S. Department of Energy and will spend 10 weeks working at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois.
This marks Ramirez’s second summer working at the national lab. In 2023, she worked with the division of nuclear, waste and site services, but her focus this summer will be with the division of energy system infrastructure assessment.
“Last year, I didn’t do much actual research during my internship, instead focusing on learning about proper processes for the disposal of radiological waste,” says the senior from Ballwin, Missouri. “This summer, I’m going to work for a senior researcher and will mostly collect and process data to evaluate the potential impact of future bioenergy development on freshwater resources.”
Her research experiences as part of S&T’s Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experiences (OURE) program have covered a different topic, but she says she anticipates this program will give her a solid starting point as a researcher when she begins her new undertaking with the national laboratory.
“My research at Missouri S&T is on phytoremediation,” Ramirez says. “More specifically, I am studying the ability of certain fungi to assist roots of native plant species with growing in soil contaminated with mine tailings. I was excited when I started on the project last year because I am most interested in doing research related to plants.”
For Denbo, a senior from Rolla, Missouri, this will be her first time working in Argonne National Laboratory, but it will also be far from her first time being involved with research.
She says her work for S&T’s OURE program has similar roots to her national lab internship in the sense that it relates to plants and improving the environment. However, her OURE project has covered the remediation of dioxane, a harmful chemical, from plants, while her internship at Argonne will focus on crops used for bioenergy.
“For my internship, I will work with other students and members of Argonne’s environmental science research group and focus on using bioenergy crops to provide ecosystem services,” Denbo says. “Some of the services could include improved water quality, biodiversity, reduced soil erosion and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. These crops could be something a farmer could plant in the off-season that would improve their crop yield the next season.
“This is something I’m passionate about because it has the ability to improve the environment for generations to come.
She says this internship will help her have a stronger idea for what specific environmental engineering career path she will eventually take.
“Having the ability to conduct research at S&T as an undergraduate student has been amazing, and this internship at a national laboratory will help take my skills to an even higher level,” she says. “Research is something I find very exciting, and this opportunity will allow me to explore what it would be like to do this as a career.”
Dr. Joel Burken, Curators’ Distinguished Professor and chair of civil, architectural and environmental engineering, says he is excited to see what both students take away from the experience and how they can use what they learn to support the department’s mantra to “change the world.”
“Being accepted for this highly selective internship program and going to a national laboratory is a huge opportunity for our students,” he says. “Kaylee and Ginger are both already talented undergraduate researchers, so I know they will make our department proud and get the most they can out of this experience.”
For more information about S&T’s environmental engineering programs, visit care.mst.edu.
Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.
On May 30, 2024. Posted in Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering and Computing, email, News
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
I participated in the UMR Co-op Program in 1968 and 1969 and worked at Argonne National Laboratory’s Zero Gradient Synchrotron. As a student it was a remarkable experience to have.
Wish Kaylee Denbo and Ginger Ramirez the best
Missouri S&T, Rolla, MO 65409 | 573-341-4111 | 800-522-0938 | Contact Us Accreditation | Consumer Information | Our Brand | Disability Support
© 2024 – Curators of the University of Missouri | UM System | Privacy Policy | WordPress
Missouri S&T is an equal opportunity/access/affirmative action/pro-disabled and veteran employer and does not discriminate on the basis of sex in our education programs or activities, pursuant to Title IX and 34 CFR Part 106. For more information, see S&T’s Nondiscrimination Policy or Equity and Title IX.