Tag: pollution

EV Pollution: Converting the World to EVs Would Be an Environmental Disaster

In 2024, President Biden said he wanted 56% of all new cars sold in the United States to be electric vehicles by 2032. California Governor Gavin Newsom similarly mandated that 35% of new 2026 model cars sold in the state be zero-emissions vehicles, rising to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.

The European Union announced in 2023 that, from 2035 onward, all new cars coming onto the market could not emit any CO2. The United Kingdom similarly announced a 2030 ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars.

The reaction from the U.S. auto industry was blunt. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation said it “will take a miracle” for all states following California’s rules to reach 100% new zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035.

They are correct. The environmental impact would be devastating. The people claiming to save the world with electric cars could end up destroying it.

Replacing every vehicle on Earth with an EV, all 1.5 to 1.6 billion of them, would be effectively impossible. There are not enough minerals to manufacture all of the batteries required. In addition, there is not enough global processing capacity, and such a transition would require incredible amounts of labor. Many of these minerals are already being mined by children and by workers laboring under hazardous and toxic conditions that amount to modern slavery.

Keep reading

These 2 companies want to start removing space junk from orbit in 2027

Two private companies are partnering up to establish a repeatable debris removal service for low Earth orbit.

The U.S. firm Portal Space Systems and Australian startup Paladin Space are working together to establish the commercial Debris Removal as a Service (DRAAS) for removing multiple debris objects during a single mission.

The partnership, which Portal announced on March 19, will see a combining of respective technologies to make the service possible. The platform will be based on Portal’s maneuverable, refuelable Starburst spacecraft and will integrate Paladin’s Triton payload for imaging, classifying and capturing tumbling debris objects under 1 meter (3 feet) in size.

Space debris experts estimate there are nearly 130 million pieces of junk in orbit, ranging from fragments from explosions and satellite deployments up to huge pieces such as abandoned spacecraft and spent rocket stages. That number alarms many people in the space community and has spurred efforts to start cleaning up our orbital neighborhood.

Some companies have already made serious headway on this effort, showing that debris capture is technically feasible. But Portal and Paladin want to go a few steps further.

“This is about making debris removal operational, not experimental,” said Jeff Thornburg, CEO of Portal Space Systems, in a statement. “Satellite data underpins communications, navigation, weather forecasting, and national security. Maintaining that infrastructure requires active debris management.”

“Most collision-avoidance activity is driven by small debris,” said Harrison Box, CEO of Paladin Space. “Triton is built to remove dozens of those objects in a single mission, which fundamentally changes the cost structure of debris remediation and provides the greatest benefit to satellite operators.”

Keep reading

Tight-knit Midwest town becomes ground zero in America’s war on AI… and local politicians get swift justice

A sleepy Midwestern town has become one of the fiercest battlegrounds in America’s growing backlash against AI data centers – and voters are making their anger clear at the ballot box.

In the town of Festus, Missouri, a community of 14,000 people near St. Louis, residents have ousted four city council members who backed plans for a massive AI data center, replacing them with candidates who openly opposed the project.

The political upheaval didn’t stop there. 

At a packed City Hall meeting following the election, newly sworn-in officials were greeted with cheers – while the city’s mayor Sam Richards, who still supports the development, was met with boos and jeers from the crowd.

‘You’re next!’ one resident shouted, underscoring how heated the fight has become.

At the center of the dispute is a proposed $6 billion data center spanning roughly 360 acres, designed to support the growing demands of artificial intelligence.

Supporters say the project could transform the local economy – generating an estimated $32 million a year in tax revenue for decades, funding schools, roads, and public services.

But many locals aren’t convinced, and opponents fear the development could strain the electrical grid, push up utility bills and disrupt daily life with years of construction.

Other residents worry about environmental risks, including pollution from backup generators and wastewater systems – concerns shaped by the region’s industrial past.

In a bid to scrap the development, locals have launched a website and a Facebook group titled No Data Center in Festus, which has attracted more than 3,000 members.

The backlash quickly spilled into local politics: In the landslide election, all four incumbents who supported the data center were voted out. 

‘It was an annihilation,’ said one local campaigner. 

Since then, more than 4,000 residents have signed petitions seeking to recall the mayor and other officials still backing the plan.

Keep reading

Zohran Mamdani to Introduce New York City to Exciting New Innovation of… Trash Cans – By 2031

New York City’s new democratic socialist (communist) Mayor Zohran Mamdani took a moment this week to tell people of the city about an exciting new invention called rat-proof trash bins, which he will be implementing by the year 2031.

You absolutely could not make this up.

Couldn’t he put these bins all over the city by say… this coming week if he wanted to? Who needs a five-year plan to put out trash cans?

WABC News in New York reports:

Containerized trash is expanding to six more New York City districts by the end of 2027, as the Mamdani administration targets citywide containerization by 2031.

Businesses and low-density residential buildings are already required to put their trash bags in containers for pickup.

Over the next year, the Sanitation Department will distribute large Empire Bins to all residential buildings with 30 units or more in the six districts.

Officials say 6,500 large Empire garbage bins will be rolled out for more than 3,500 buildings in this expansion.

They can be only opened by building staff with a keycard, or by sanitation workers…

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement, “In the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have their sidewalks covered in garbage. By finishing the job on containerization, we will ensure New York City’s streets remain the envy of the world. We have the plan, we’re investing the money and we’re delivering on the promise of clean, healthy streets for every neighborhood.”

He actually did an announcement about this.

Keep reading

So, Is That Why the Washington Post Isn’t Covering DC’s Raw Sewage Nightmare?

It’s a total s**t show in Washington, DC. For those not following, four weeks ago, an underground sewage line failed, and the Potomac, which is already disgusting, has been flooded with hundreds of millions of gallons of human waste. If it hasn’t taken the title, it will soon for being the worst wastewater spill in US history. 

To boot, it won’t be fixed for another 10 months. It should be covered, in The Washington Post of all places, but it isn’t. Maybe that’s because there’s a Joe Biden connection: the CEO and general manager of DC Water is David L. Gadis, who the former braindead president picked to serve on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council to “serve with distinction as the sole expert on the Council from the wastewater utilities sector” in 2022.

DC Water says the underground sewer line that burst and began spewing wastewater into the Potomac River four weeks ago could take another 10 months to repair. 

Although DC Water crews continue to successfully divert the majority of the sewage away from the river, officials say more than 240 million gallons of sewage has made its way into the Potomac. 

In the latest spillover, a mass of flushed wipes clogged the utility company’s temporary pumps, releasing an additional 600,000 gallons of sewage water into the Potomac. 

“The risk of flow entering the Potomac River exists until we can get the flow back into the Potomac Interceptor. Right now, it’s bypassed through the C&O Canal and then routed back into the Potomac Interceptor,” DC Water COO Matthew Brown said. 

“And so that is our goal. That is what we are working towards. And there are people on site 24 hours a day working to make this happen,” he said. 

Brown is the first high-level DC Water official to have spoken publicly about the incident. 

Keep reading

UK’s Countryside Trash Horror: Oxfordshire River Turns Into Third-World Dump

Shocking footage from Oxfordshire reveals a massive illegal fly-tip turning the picturesque River Cherwell into a wasteland of rubbish, piled 20 feet deep and stretching 500 feet long. 

This environmental outrage, dubbed a “catastrophe” by locals, highlights how the once-pristine English countryside is devolving into scenes reminiscent of third-world pollution hotspots, where unchecked dumping poisons rivers and landscapes.

The enormous heap, estimated at hundreds of tonnes of plastic, foam, wood, and household waste, appeared overnight in a floodplain near Kidlington, just meters from the A34 and the River Cherwell. 

The pile is one of the UK’s largest fly-tips ever recorded, posing severe risks to wildlife, water quality, and public health with fears of toxins leaching into the river. 

Keep reading

The Nuclear Waste Problem Haunting UK Energy Expansion

  • Effective nuclear waste management is a critical global challenge, particularly for countries like the UK looking to expand their nuclear power sectors.
  • The UK has a substantial amount of existing radioactive waste and is struggling to implement a long-term disposal solution, with the proposed underground geological disposal facility facing significant hurdles and cost concerns.
  • Public and local community pushback against potential nuclear waste sites further complicates the development of new disposal facilities, making finding a solution an ongoing and difficult process.

One of the biggest hurdles to expanding the global nuclear power sector is the concern over how best to manage nuclear waste.

While some believe they have found sustainable solutions to dispose of nuclear waste, there is still widespread debate around how safe these methods are and the potential long-term impact of waste disposal and storage.

In the United Kingdom, the government has put nuclear power back on the agenda, after decades with no new nuclear developments; however, managing nuclear waste continues to be a major barrier to development. 

Keep reading

European nations dumped 200,000 barrels of radioactive waste in the ocean, and humans might soon pay the price

A team of scientists has found 3,355 barrels of radioactive waste at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery was made at a depth of 13,000 feet, and hundreds of miles offshore from France. This is only a tiny part of the actual number of barrels filled with nuclear waste scattered at the bottom of the sea. Between 1946 and 1990, over 200,000 such barrels were dumped by European nations, assuming it was the best way to keep people on land safe. This was done under the supervision of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), a body comprising 34 countries that is tasked with ensuring nuclear safety and waste management. But now there are fears that this waste can reach humans via the food chain. Scientists have warned that this radioactive material could be absorbed by marine life, which can enter sea creatures and then humans who eat the contaminated seafood. This could cause long-term health issues, damage tissues, and increase the risk of cancer.

The barrels are not capable of holding the contents inside them forever. They were designed to release the radioactive material slowly, but surely. They had a life span of 20 to 26 years, and that time is already gone. So what next? The French scientists are on a mission to understand what would happen to these barrels. In the first leg, they used sonar and the autonomous underwater robot UlyX to map the Abyssal Plains. They said that most of the radioactive material in these barrels is weak and does not pose any immediate risk to humans since it is deep inside the ocean. However, this does not mitigate the long-term effects, which include contaminating marine life and entering the food chain. About one-third of the material in these barrels was tritium, which is considered insignificant. The rest are beta and gamma emitters, which lose radioactivity, with about two per cent being alpha radiation.

Keep reading

Trump EPA To Remove “Greenhouse Gases” From List Of Dangerous Pollutants

The Trump administration is acting to overturn a key 2009 Environmental Protection Agency finding used to justify most federal government regulations regarding climate change.

The EPA has crafted a proposal that would undo the government’s “endangerment finding”, a determination that pollutants from burning fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The finding has long served as the foundation for a host of policies and rules to address climate change. The EPA’s proposal to revoke the finding is currently under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In 2007, the Supreme Court found in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency is required to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Then, in 2009 during the Obama administration, the EPA declared greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were a hazard to people. 

“This long-overdue finding cements 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began seriously addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in announcing the decision.

Keep reading

How China Is Censoring Scientific Research Across The Globe

We all know how serious environmental degradation is in China. Its emissions have skyrocketed, air and water quality have plummeted, and critical habitat and ecosystems have disappeared. That’s why unadulterated research on the topic is critical to better informed policy. But my recent experience shows that China’s censorship model is spreading to the West, hindering that research from taking place.

In 2012 I published an academic paper in the journal Environmental Politics coining the term “authoritarian environmentalism” to describe the way that environmental policy is made in China. This year, I was approached by Lu Liao, a professor of urban planning at Renmin University in Beijing, to submit a paper to a special issue on China in Environmental Policy and Governance, a respected journal published by the major academic publisher Wiley, based in New Jersey.

I suggested reviewing what we have learned about “authoritarian environmentalism” since 2012. “The idea of revisiting the 2012 paper sounds very timely and meaningful,” replied Liao, who sits on the editorial board of Environmental Policy and Governance.

That’s when things went awry. The proposal I sent her included a new research question about whether the policy model in China is flawed by design, a form of greenwashing intended to legitimate one-party rule rather than improve the environment.

After a few days, Liao wrote back to report some “intriguing context from my own position,” as she called it. “Due to current sensitivities around ideology and international relations in China, many Chinese universities are quite cautious about discussions involving certain terms, and faculty are prohibited from publish[ing] work on some sensitive topics.”

I was “invited” to withdraw my submission and seek publication elsewhere. China’s censorship regime was being extended to a Western scholar and to a Western academic journal.

I reached out to the journal’s editor, Andy Gouldson, professor of environmental policy at Leeds University, who has done work in China, seeking clarification. He confirmed that “there are sensitivities for the guest editors of the special issue” and invited me to submit the paper as a regular contribution. I’ll decline. I won’t publish in a journal that bends to China’s censorship regime.

Put aside the irony that my research on authoritarianism in China was sidelined by authoritarianism in China. The bigger scandal here is how Western academics and publishers are willing to allow PRC censorship to dictate the terms of their trade.

Keep reading