His family found the 73-year-old lying on the ground, his lower body burned. Hom died at the hospital, his core body temperature at 107 degrees.

The death certificates of more than 2,300 people who died in the United States last summer mention the effects of excessive heat, the highest number in 45 years of records, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. With May already breaking heat records, 2024 could be even deadlier.

And more than two dozen doctors, public health experts, and meteorologists told the AP that last year’s figure was only a fraction of the real death toll. Coroner, hospital, ambulance and weather records show America’s heat and health problem at an entirely new level.

“We can be confident saying that 2023 was the worst year we’ve had from since … we’ve started having reliable reporting on that,” said Dr. John Balbus, director of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s people that live the hot life. These are the ones who are dying. People who work outside, people that can’t air-condition their house,” said Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who was in hard-hit southern Texas. “It’s really quite, quite grim.”

Dallas postal worker Eugene Gates Jr., loved working outdoors and at 7:30 a.m. June 20, the 66-year-old texted his wife that it was close to 90 degrees. He kept working in the heat that felt like 119 degrees with the humidity factored in and finally passed out in somebody’s yard. He ran a fever of 104.6 degrees and died, with the medical examiner saying heat contributed to his death.

FILE – Police officer James Rhodes uses a wet towel to cool off as he directs traffic after a sporting event in Arlington, Texas, on Aug. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

FILE – Juan Carlos Biseno sweats as he dances to music from his headphones as afternoon temperatures reach 115 degrees on July 19, 2023, in Calexico, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

“The way that my husband died, it could have been prevented,” said Carla Gates.

“There’s just very low awareness that heat kills. It’s the silent killer,” said University of Washington public health scientist Kristie Ebi, who helped write a United Nations special report on extreme weather. That 2012 report warned of future dangerous heat waves.

Ebi said in the last few years, the heat “seems like it’s coming faster. It seems like it’s more severe than we expected.”

DEATHS DOWN SOUTH

Last summer’s heat wave killed differently than past ones that triggered mass deaths in northern cities where people weren’t used to the high temperatures and air conditioning wasn’t common. Several hundreds died in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, in Philadelphia in 1998 and in Chicago in 1995.

Nearly three-quarters of the heat deaths last summer were in five southern states that were supposed to be used to the heat and planned for it. Except this time they couldn’t handle it, and it killed 874 people in Arizona, 450 in Texas, 226 in Nevada, 84 in Florida and 83 in Louisiana.

Those five states accounted for 61% of the nation’s heat deaths in the last five years, skyrocketing past their 18% share of U.S. deaths from 1979 to 1999.

At least 645 people were killed by the heat in Maricopa County, Arizona, alone, according to the medical examiner’s office. People were dying in their cars and especially on the streets, where homelessness, drug abuse and mental illness made matters worse.

Three months after being evicted from her home, 64-year-old Diana Smith was found dead in the back of her car. Her cause of death was methamphetamine and fentanyl, worsened by heat exposure, Phoenix’s medical examiner ruled.

“In the last five years, we are seeing this consistent and record kind of unprecedented upward trend. And I think it’s because the levels of heat that we have seen in the last several years have exceeded what we had seen in the last 20 or 30,” said Balbus, of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the Department of Health and Human Services.

UNRELENTING HEAT

Phoenix saw 20 consecutive days of extreme heat stress in July, the longest run of such dangerously hot days in the city since at least 1940, according to the data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Phoenix wasn’t alone.

Last year the U.S. had the most heat waves since 1936. In the South and Southwest, Last year was the worst on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It was crazy,” said University of Miami tropical meteorology researcher Brian McNoldy, who spent the summer documenting how Miami broke its daily heat index record 40% of the days between mid-June and mid-October.

Houston’s Hobby airport broke daily high temperature marks 43 times, meteorologists said. Nighttime lows set records for heat 57 times, they said. That didn’t give people’s bodies chances to recover.

Across five southern states, the average rate of emergency department visits for heat illness in the summer of 2023 was over double that of the previous five summers, according to an analysis of data from the CDC.

THE DEATHS

Experts warned that counting heat mortality based on death certificates leads to underestimates. Heat illness can be missed, or might not be mentioned.

They pointed to “excess death” studies for a more realistic count. These are the type of long-accepted epidemiological studies that look at grand totals of deaths during unusual conditions — such as hot days, high air pollution or a spreading COVID-19 pandemic — and compare them to normal times, creating an expected trend line.

FILE – Patrons try to cool off inside at the Justa Center as temperatures are expected to hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit, on July 18, 2023, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

FILE – A man wipes his brow as he walks under misters, on July 13, 2023, in downtown Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

Texas A&M’s Dessler and his colleague Jangho Lee published one such study early last year. According to their methods, Lee said, about 11,000 heat deaths likely occurred in 2023 in the U.S. — a figure that would represent a record since at least 1987 and is about five times the number reported on death certificates.

Deaths are also up because of better reporting, and because Americans are getting older and more vulnerable to heat, Lee said. The population is also slowly shifting to cities, which are more exposed to heat.

THE FUTURE

In some places, last year’s heat already rivals the worst on record. As of late May, Miami was on track to be 1.5 degrees warmer than the hottest May on record, according to McNoldy. Dallas’ Murphy pointed to maps saying conditions with a broiling Mexico are “eerily similar to what we saw last June” so he is worried about “a very brutal summer.”

Texas A&M’s Dessler said last year’s heat was “a taste of the future.”

“I just think in 20 years, you know, 2040 rolls around … we’re going to look back at 2023 and say, man, that was cool,” Dessler said. “The problem with climate change is if if it hasn’t pushed you over the edge yet, just wait.”

The post AP analysis finds 2023 set record for US heat deaths, killing in areas that used to handle the heat appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

The Financial Services Agency will set up a panel this month to work out the details of the envisioned policy in support of global efforts to accelerate decarbonization, according to its plan proposed at a meeting of the Financial System Council.

One option would be to first target major firms facing increasing scrutiny by global institutional investors, rather than applying the envisaged rule to all of the roughly 1,600 companies listed on the Prime Market at once, according to the government plan.

Japan is seeking to develop sustainability disclosure standards based on those unveiled in 2023 by the International Sustainability Standards Board, a global body that sets financial reporting rules. The country’s draft standards are expected to be released by the end of March.

Since the start of the business year through March 2023, Japanese companies have been required to include information in their financial statements on how they are tackling sustainability issues, in addition to such information as wage disparities between men and women.

Some companies already disclose emissions data, even without a specific requirement to do so.

With greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, the European Union is strengthening its sustainability reporting rules for companies. There are also similar moves in the United States.

The Japanese government has set a target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. It has been trying to encourage more private-sector investment to achieve green growth.

In a survey of roughly 11,300 companies conducted last year by research firm Teikoku Databank, 17.3 percent said decarbonization efforts would have a negative impact, while 14.1 percent responded operations would be positively impacted. The remaining companies said they expected little impact or were not sure.

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Snakebites already inflict tremendous suffering across South Asia, where lack of awareness and access to treatment leaves thousands dead or disabled each year. Now, climate change threatens to dramatically worsen this humanitarian crisis.

Rising temperatures are altering snake habitats, forcing species into new areas where human encounters are more likely. Floods and extreme weather also compromise shelter, exposing vulnerable groups like children to greater risk.

Research confirms each added degree Celsius significantly heightens bite probabilities. Yet adapting to warming conditions stresses snakes, increasing unpredictable behavior that can endanger nearby communities.

Declining habitats also emerge as snakes lose territory to urban expansion, agricultural changes and infrastructure development. With few natural predators, uncontrolled rodent populations follow – jeopardizing food security and public health.

While antivenoms exist, production and distribution remain inadequate across the region. Improving treatments alone neglects socioeconomic root causes. Addressing poverty, education and gender inequities through integrated strategic planning remains key to empowering at-risk populations.

With climate impacts worsening, decisive cooperation is needed from governments, aid groups and researchers. Prioritizing prevention, early response training and snake-friendly coexistence models can curb rising bites if combined with efforts empowering communities most vulnerable to the evolving threats. As the crisis grows, so too does the call for global solidarity with South Asia’s marginalized.

The post How Climate Change is Exacerbating South Asia’s Snakebite Epidemic appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

“Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades,” warned a study published in Global Environmental Change in 2018. “Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for warfare in the past, tensions over freshwater management and use represent one of the main concerns in political relations between… states and may exacerbate existing tensions, increase regional instability and social unrest.”

The situation is beyond dire. In 2023, it was estimated that upwards of three billion people, or more than 37% of humanity, faced real water shortages, a crisis predicted to dramatically worsen in the decades to come. Consider it ironic then that, as water is disappearing, huge dams — more than 3,000 of them — that require significant river flow to operate are now being built at an unprecedented pace globally. Moreover, 500 dams are being constructed in legally protected areas like national parks and wildlife reserves. There was a justification for this, claimed the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) some years ago. Such projects, it believed, would help battle climate change by curbing carbon dioxide emissions while bringing electricity to those in the greatest of need.

“[Hydropower] remains the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector,” the IPCC wrote in 2018. “Evidence suggests that relatively high levels of deployment over the next 20 years are feasible, and hydropower should remain an attractive renewable energy source within the context of global [greenhouse gas] mitigation scenarios.”

The IPCC acknowledged that unceasing droughts impact stream flow and that climate change is unpredictably worsening matters. Yet its climate experts still contended that hydropower could be a crucial part of the world’s energy transition, arguing that an electric dam will produce seemingly endless energy. At the same time, other renewable sources like wind and solar power have their weather- and sunlight-bound limitations.

A crack in the dam logic

Well-intentioned as it may have been, it’s now far clearer that there is a crack in the IPCC’s appraisal. For one thing, recent research suggests that hydro-powered dams can create an alarming amount of climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. Rotting vegetation at the bottom of such reservoirs, especially in warmer climates (as in much of Africa), releases significant amounts of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

“Most of this vegetation would have rotted anyway, of course. But, without reservoirs, the decomposition would occur mostly in the atmosphere or in well-oxygenated rivers or lakes,” explains Fred Pearce in the Independent. “The presence of oxygen would ensure the carbon in the plants formed carbon dioxide. But many reservoirs, particularly in the tropics, contain little oxygen. Under those anaerobic conditions, rotting vegetation generates methane instead.”

While CO2 also seriously harms the climate, methane emissions are far worse in the short term.

“We estimate that dams emit around 25% more methane by unit of surface than previously estimated,” says Bridget Deemer of the School of Environment at Washington State University in Vancouver, lead author of a highly-cited study on greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. “Methane stays in the atmosphere for only around a decade, while CO2 stays several centuries, but over the course of 20 years, methane contributes almost three times more to global warming than CO2.”

And that’s hardly the only problem dams face in the twenty-first century. At the moment, Chinese financing is the most significant global driver of new hydropower construction. China has invested in the creation of at least 330 dams in 74 countries. Each project poses its own set of environmental quandaries. But above all, the heating of the planet — last year was the warmest in human history and January 2024 the hottest January on record — is making many of those investments look increasingly dubious.

On this ever-hotter globe of ours, for instance, a drought in Ecuador has all too typically impacted the functionality of the Amaluza Dam on the Paute River, which provides 60% of that country’s electricity. Paute was running at 40% capacity recently as its river flow dwindled. Similarly, in southern Africa, water levels at the Kariba Dam’s reservoir, located between Zambia and Zimbabwe, have fluctuated drastically, impairing its ability to produce consistent energy.

“In recent years, drought intensified by climate change has caused reservoirs on all five continents⁠ to drop below levels needed to maintain hydroelectric production,” writes Jacques Leslie in Yale E360, “and the problem is bound to worsen as climate change deepens.”

Even in the United States, the viability of hydropower is an increasing concern. The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, for example, has been impacted by years of drought. Water levels at its reservoir, Lake Mead, continue to plummet, raising fears that its days are numbered. The same is true for the Glen Canyon Dam, which also holds back the Colorado, forming Lake Powell. As the Colorado dries up, Glen Canyon may also lose its ability to produce electricity.

Driven by dwindling water resources, the global hydropower crisis has become a flashpoint in the far reaches of Northern Africa, where the creation of a giant dam could very well lead to a regional war and worse.

A crisis on the Nile

The lifeblood of northeastern Africa, the Nile River, flows through 11 countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Measured at 6,650 kilometers, the Nile may be the longest river on Earth. For millennia, its meandering waters, which run through lush jungles and dry deserts, have been irrigating farmlands and providing drinking water for millions of people. Nearly 95% of Egypt’s 109 million people live within a few kilometers of the Nile. Arguably the most important natural resource in Africa, it’s now at the epicenter of a geopolitical dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan that’s brought those countries to the brink of military conflict.

A major dam being built along the Blue Nile, the river’s main tributary, is upending the status quo in the region, where Egypt has long been the preeminent nation. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD for short) is to become one of the largest hydroelectric dams ever constructed, stretching more than 1,700 meters and standing 145 meters tall, a monument many will love and others despise.

There’s no question that Ethiopia needs the electricity GERD will produce. Nearly 45% of all Ethiopians lack regular power and GERD promises to produce upwards of 5.15 gigawatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, a single gigawatt would power 876,000 households annually in the United States. Construction on the dam, which began in 2011, was 90% complete by last August when it began producing power. In total, GERD’s cost is expected to eclipse $5 billion, making it the largest infrastructure project Ethiopia has ever undertaken and the largest dam on the African continent.

It will not only bring reliable power to that country but promises a culture shift welcomed by many. “Mothers who’ve given birth in the dark, girls who fetch wood for fire instead of going to school — we’ve waited so many years for this — centuries,” says Filsan Abdi of the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth. “When we say that Ethiopia will be a beacon of prosperity, it starts here.”

While most Ethiopians may see the dam in a positive light, the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan (itself embroiled in a devastating civil war) were never consulted, and their officials are indignant. The massive reservoir behind GERD’s gigantic cement wall will hold back 74 billion cubic meters of water. That means Ethiopia will have remarkable control over the flow of the Nile, giving its leaders power over how much access to water both Egyptians and Sudanese will have. The Blue Nile, after all, provides 59% of Egypt’s freshwater supply.

As it happens, fresh water in Egypt has long been growing scarcer and so the country’s leadership has taken the threat of GERD seriously for years. In 2012, for instance, Wikileaks obtained internal emails from the “global intelligence” firm Stratfor revealing that Egypt and Sudan were even then considering directing the Egyptian Special Forces to destroy the dam, still in the early stages of construction. “[We] are discussing military cooperation with Sudan,” a high-level Egyptian source was quoted as saying. While such a direct attack never transpired, Stratfor claimed that Egypt might once again lend support to “proxy militant groups against Ethiopia” (as it had in the 1970s and 1980s) if diplomacy were to hit a dead end.

Unfortunately, the most recent negotiations to calm the hostility around GERD have gone distinctly awry. Last April, the embittered Egyptians responded to the lack of any significant progress by conducting a three-day military drill with Sudan at a naval base in the Red Sea aimed at frightening Ethiopian officials. “All options are on the table,” warned Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. “[All] alternatives remain available and Egypt has its capabilities.”

Seemingly unfazed by such military threats, Ethiopia plans to finish building the dam, claiming it will provide much-needed energy to impoverished Ethiopians and limit the country’s overall carbon footprint. “[GERD] represents a sustainable socio-economic project for Ethiopia: replacing fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions,” the Ethiopian embassy in Washington has asserted.

GERD, however, falls squarely into the category of being a major problem dam — and not just because it could lead to a bloody war in a region already in horrific turmoil. Once filled, its massive reservoir will cover a staggering 1,874 square kilometers, making it more than three-quarters the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake (after it started to shrink).

Unfortunately, GERD never underwent a proper environmental impact assessment (EIA) despite being legally required to do so. No EIA was ever carried out because the notoriously corrupt Ethiopian government knew that the results wouldn’t be pleasing and was unwilling to let any roadblocks get in the way of the dam’s construction, something that became more obvious when upwards of 20,000 indigenous Gumuz and Berta natives began to be forced from their homes to make way for the monstrous dam.

Publicly coming out against the dam has proven a risky business. Employees of International Rivers, a nonprofit that advocates for people endangered by dams, have been harassed and received death threats in response to their opposition. Prominent Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu, a critic of the dam and the government’s actions concerning it, was imprisoned for more than four years under draconian anti-terrorism laws.

Electric water wars

While GERD has created a dicey conflict, it also has international ramifications. China, which has played such a pivotal role in bankrolling hydropower projects globally in these years, has provided $1.2 billion to help the Ethiopians build transmission lines from the dam to nearby towns. Since it has also heavily invested in Egypt, it’s well-positioned, if any country is, to help navigate the GERD dispute.

Military analysts in the United States argue that China’s involvement with the dam is part of a policy meant to put the US at a distinct disadvantage in the race to exploit Africa’s abundant rare earth minerals from the cobalt caverns of the Congo to the vast lithium deposits in Ethiopia’s hinterlands. China, the world’s “largest debt collector,” has indeed poured money into Africa. As of 2021, it was that continent’s largest creditor, holding 20% of its total debt. The growth of Chinese influence internationally and in Africa — it has large infrastructure projects in 35 African countries — is crucial to understanding the latest version of the globe’s imperial geopolitics.

Most of China’s African ventures are connected to Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a program of this century to fund infrastructure deals across Eurasia and Africa. Its economic ties to Africa began, however, with Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s push in the 1950s and 1960s for an “Afro-Asian” alliance that would challenge Western imperialism.

So many decades later, the idea of such an alliance plays second fiddle to China’s global economic desires, which, like so many past imperial projects in Africa, have significant downsides for those on the receiving end. Developing countries desperately need capital, so they’re willing to accept rigid terms and conditions from China, even if they represent the latest version of the century’s old colonialism and neo-colonialism that focused on controlling the continent’s rich resources. This is certainly true in the case of China’s hydropower investments in places like Ghana’s Bui Dam and the Congo River Dam in the Republic of Congo, where multi-billion-dollar loans are backed by Congo’s crude oil and Ghana’s cocoa crops.

In 2020, the US belatedly inserted itself into the GERD feud, threatening to cut $130 million in aid for Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism efforts. The Ethiopians believed it was related to the dam controversy, as they also did when, in June 2023, the Biden administration directed USAID to halt all food assistance to the country (upwards of $2 billion), claiming it wasn’t reaching Ethiopians, only to reverse course months later.

The dispute over Ethiopia’s enormous dam should be a warning of what the future holds on a hotter, drier planet, where the rivers that feed dams like GERD are drying up while the superpowers continue to jockey for position, hoping to control what remains of the world’s resources. Hydropower won’t help solve the climate crisis, but new dam projects may lead to war over one thing key to our survival — access to fresh, clean water.

The post Is There a Place for Hydropower in a Warming World? appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

The ASIA-AQ, a joint effort by South Korea’s National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), aims to collect detailed air quality data over several locations in Asia using aircraft, satellites, and ground sites.

It has already completed four flights in the Philippines and Taiwan over the past few weeks.

“This campaign seeks to find the causes behind air quality deteriorating in the Korean Peninsula during wintertime,” said Yoo Myung-soo, the NIER director general of the climate and air quality research department, during a media briefing at the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 60 kilometers south of Seoul, on Friday.

“The results of the joint investigation will also be used to enhance the effectiveness and reliability of domestic policies concerning the atmospheric environment,” he added.

The joint research, tentatively set for Feb. 19-26, comes eight years after South Korea led the KORUS-AQ campaign with NASA in 2016, which found that 52 percent of ultrafine particles examined in Seoul were picked up from within South Korea and 48 percent from overseas, including 34 percent coming in from China.

The main differences between the KORUS-AQ and the new initiative is the time of the year the research is conducted, which changed from spring to winter, and the mobilization of the newly launched GEMS satellite, Barry Lefer of NASA said.

In 2020, South Korea launched the world’s first geostationary environment satellite, or GEMS, to monitor air pollutants across Asia from 36,000 kilometers above ground.

The research team will also utilize detailed ground measurements from 11 air quality research sites, including in Seoul and on the islands of Baengnyeong and Jeju, and collect aircraft sampling of the lower atmosphere using NASA’s DC-8, an in-situ aircraft flying within the altitude of 2,000 feet.

“This means that from the ground we can measure what you breathe but from space we can measure the accumulation of total pollutants,” said Jim Crawford from NASA leading the ASIA-AQ project.

The campaign is also designed to cross-check the measurements of the GEMS, which monitors the air quality in Asia eight times a day, as the data requires verification through comparison with ground-based observations.

“It will take time to calibrate the raw data and turn it into data that is useful for science,” said Crawford, adding the interpretation and findings from the data will be open to the public the following year.

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This demand has led to considerable diversification in the ways of preparing coffee as well, including the creation of coffee capsules. The popularity of these capsules has divided the public opinion because this method of preparation, which uses single-use individual packaging, is harmful to the environment.

As researchers working on assessing the environmental impacts of products and services, we often discuss coffee’s carbon footprint.

We decided to study the carbon footprint of several techniques used to prepare coffee at home, and it turns out that coffee capsules aren’t the biggest carbon culprits.

The life cycle of coffee

The pollution resulting from the preparation of coffee at home is just the tip of the iceberg.

Before you can enjoy a cup of coffee, it goes through several steps, starting from the agricultural production of the coffee beans, their transport, the roasting and grinding of the beans, right up to the heating of the water for the coffee and the washing of the cups it is poured in.

These steps, common to all modes of coffee preparation, consume resources and emit greenhouse gases (GHG).

To adequately compare the carbon footprint of several coffee preparation methods, it is important to consider their entire life cycle: from the production of coffee, through the manufacture of packaging and machinery, to the preparation of coffee and the waste produced.

Comparing four coffee preparation methods

We decided to study this further and conducted an extensive literature review on the subject. We then measured the carbon footprint of coffee by comparing four methods of preparing 280 millilitres of coffee, namely:

1) Traditional filter coffee (25 grams of coffee)

2) Encapsulated filter coffee (14 grams of coffee)

3) Brewed coffee (French press) (17 grams of coffee)

4) Soluble coffee (12 grams of coffee), also known as instant coffee

Our analysis clearly showed that traditional filter coffee has the highest carbon footprint, mainly because a greater quantity of coffee powder is used to produce the amount of coffee. This process also consumes more electricity to heat the water and keep it warm.

The carbon footprint generated across the life cycle of coffee, preparation of different coffee forms and brewing methods. (Luciano Rodrigues Viana). Author provided.

When consumers use the recommended amounts of coffee and water, soluble coffee appears to be the most environmentally friendly option. This is due to the low amount of soluble coffee used per cup, the kettle’s lower electricity consumption compared to a coffee maker and the absence of organic waste to be treated.

On the other hand, when consumers use a 20 per cent surplus of coffee and heat twice the water needed (which is often the case), coffee capsules seem to be the best option. Why? Because the capsules allow you to optimize the amount of coffee and water per consumption.

Compared to traditional filter coffee, drinking a capsule filter coffee (280 ml) saves between 11 and 13 grams of coffee. Producing 11 grams of Arabica coffee in Brazil emits about 59 grams of CO2e (CO2 equivalent). This value is much higher than the 27 grams of CO2e emitted for manufacturing of coffee capsules and sending the generated waste to a landfill. These figures give an idea of the importance of avoiding overusing and wasting coffee.

Coffee production

Regardless of the type of coffee preparation, coffee production is the most GHG-emitting phase. It contributed to around 40 per cent to 80 per cent of the total emission. There are many reasons for this.

The coffee plant is a small stunted tree or shrub that was traditionally grown in the shade of the forest canopy. The modernization of the sector led to the transformation of many coffee plantations into vast fields that were fully exposed to the sun. This added the need for intensive irrigation, fertilization systems and the use of pesticides.

This mechanization, irrigation and use of nitrous oxide-emitting fertilizers — the production of which requires large quantities of natural gas — greatly contribute to coffee’s carbon footprint.

Reducing coffee’s carbon footprint

At the consumer level, beyond reducing coffee consumption, avoiding wasting coffee and water is the most effective way to reduce the carbon footprint of traditional, brewed and soluble coffees.

Coffee capsules avoid the overuse of coffee and water. However, the convenience of capsule machines can lead consumers to double their coffee consumption, thus making this environmental advantage redundant. Consumers should also be aware of the capsule recycling options in the city where they live to avoid it getting sent to a landfill instead of a recycling facility. Better yet, they should switch to reusable capsules.

If you live in a province or country with carbon-intensive electricity production, not using the coffee maker’s hot plate and rinsing the cup with cold water can help reduce carbon footprint.

The electricity used to wash a cup of coffee in Alberta, a high-carbon electricity production province, emits more carbon (29 grams CO2e) than producing a coffee capsule and sending it to landfill (27 grams CO2e). In Québec, thanks to hydroelectricity, washing your cup in a dishwasher has a negligible impact (0.7 grams of CO2e per cup).

By the way, don’t forget to fill your dishwasher!

Shared responsibilities

Limiting your contribution to climate change requires an adapted diet, and coffee is no exception. Choosing a mode of coffee preparation that emits less GHGs and moderating your consumption are part of the solution.

However, more than half of the carbon footprint of coffee comes from the steps taken by coffee producers and suppliers. They must take action to reduce the environmental and social impacts of coffee production.

Our research reveals that assessments based on a life cycle analysis, or the holistic vision, of products like coffee make it possible to challenge our intuitive reasoning, which is sometimes misleading. So instead of avoiding products based on speculation, we need to take a holistic look at our own consumption habits. Change begins at home.

The post Here’s how your cup of coffee contributes to climate change appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

The injured were aged 4 to 92 and none were in a life-threatening condition, it said. In neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture, more than 30 sustained injuries, while more than 50 were slightly hurt in Saitama Prefecture.

The Japan Meteorological Agency lifted its heavy snow warnings across nine prefectures, but snowfall and rain continued in some areas through the morning.

Most sections on East Japan Railway’s Chuo Line and Ome Line that had been temporarily halted were back in operation by Tuesday afternoon.

According to JR East, six express trains were stuck at stations for over 10 hours overnight, forcing over 1,600 passengers to spend the night onboard. One was taken to hospital after feeling unwell.

All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines canceled around 30 domestic flights, mostly to or from Tokyo’s Haneda airport.

Many passengers in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station could be seen asking for refunds and changing to other train lines.

“The train was already canceled when I arrived at the station. Business negotiations will have to be postponed to another day,” said a 32-year-old woman who had planned to go to Kofu Station in Yamanashi Prefecture for work.

Through Monday evening, Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture recorded the highest amount of snowfall at 11 centimeters, while central Tokyo and the city of Saitama saw 8 cm each, according to the weather agency.

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The town sprang up around the mill and was named for the company that originally owned it, the St. Clair Steel Company. Within a year, after rapid expansion, “the people in that vicinity awakened to the fact that Clairton was not a fable.” In 1904, St. Clair sold the mill to U.S. Steel.

More than a century later, the Clairton Coke Works is still operating in Clairton, and it is still owned by U.S. Steel, which uses coke, a fuel for blast furnaces made from coal, for steel manufacturing nearby. But that early vision of the plant as an engine of the town’s growth—and an essential element of its identity—is no longer universally accepted, and disputes over the pollution it produces have roiled Clairton and neighboring communities for years.

On Jan. 10, residents, local officials, U.S. Steel employees and environmental advocates gathered at the Clairton Municipal Building to weigh in on the Coke Works’ Title V operating permit, a document issued by the Allegheny County Health Department and overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency that outlines a facility’s obligations to control air pollution under the Clean Air Act.

This hearing, and a second meeting that took place on Jan. 17, have become the latest field of battle between the steel company and people living near the Coke Works who say that pollution from the plant is making them sick and preventing progress in Clairton.

The Coke Works is the largest coke plant in the United States and one of the largest sources of pollution in Allegheny County, producing 13,000 tons of coke a day from 18,000 tons of coal. In 2021, PennEnvironment named the Coke Works the most toxic air polluter in Allegheny County, responsible for 60 percent of the county’s air pollution emissions from industrial sites. Because of its age and size, the plant represents a massive challenge to regulators.

“It’s such an old facility. Even its updated batteries are old,” said Patrick Campbell, the executive director of Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), a Southwestern Pennsylvania nonprofit focused on air quality. “There’s just so many thousands of points of emissions locations. It’s astounding.”

“We had a visitor come who is working on cleaning up coke plants around the world. She’s been to plants in China and Pakistan and Indonesia, and she said she’s never seen anything like the Clairton Coke Works: the pollution levels, the rundown nature of the facility and the scale of it,” said Matthew Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, an organization that monitors air quality and pollution in Southwestern Pennsylvania. “When you hear that from people who come from the outside it really is telling.”

In a statement, a U.S. Steel representative noted the company’s commitment to “safe and environmentally responsible” steelmaking and said that U.S. Steel maintains “a compliance rate over 99 percent and attainment with all National Ambient Air Quality Standards.”

Since 2020, U.S. Steel has been fined more than $11 million for air quality violations at the Clairton Coke Works, and litigation is ongoing over a fire that broke out at the plant on Christmas Eve in 2018, destroying the facility’s pollution controls.

“It’s loud,” said Melanie Meade, a resident of Clairton who said noises from the Coke Works often keep her up at night. “Since the fire I think I get a little bit anxious if I hear certain sounds for too long.”

After burying her parents and two siblings between 2011 and 2015, she attributes her family members’ early deaths from cardiac problems and lung cancer to years of exposure to the Coke Works. When the Shenango Coke Works, 25 miles north of Clairton, closed in 2016, the number of ER visits in the surrounding areas for cardiovascular issues immediately dropped.

Meade said her son has developed allergies since they moved back to Clairton from North Carolina, and sometimes she can smell the Coke Works in her house, a scent like something rotten “coming in through the windows.” She tells her son not to play outside on days when the air is particularly bad. A 2020 study showed that 22 percent of children living near the Coke Works had asthma, three times the national rate, and there was a doubling of asthma attacks after the Christmas Eve fire. The Clairton elementary school is less than a mile from the mill.

To Meade, the Coke Works’ spewing smokestacks are a reminder of the town’s indifference toward its citizens’ well-being, 40 percent of whom are African American. Twenty-three percent of Clairton’s residents live below the poverty line.

“If we lived in Bethel Park, it just wouldn’t happen,” she said. Bethel Park is a largely white suburb of Pittsburgh with a median household income of more than $100,000. For Meade, the Title V permit fight is a symptom of the larger problem of environmental racism.

Meade also disagrees with the common contention from industry supporters that the Coke Works is vital to the region’s economy and to Clairton’s survival. “McKeesport and Duquesne and Clairton all look like the ‘Night of the Living Dead’ cities. None of those cities are flourishing,” she said. “So I don’t see what Clairton Coke Works is doing for them.”

Mehalik, of the Breathe Project, said plants like the Coke Works “hold back these communities from attracting new investment and reinvestment in the infrastructure of the county.”

The population of Clairton has been in decline since the 1960s.

“It’s hard to thrive when 20 percent of your school kids get asthma,” said Qiyam Ansari, the president of Valley Clean Air Now, a grassroots environmental organization based in Clairton. Ansari was once one of those kids. His family moved to Braddock Hills, a Mon Valley town about 15 miles north of Clairton, 14 years ago when he was in high school.

“My asthma was considered mild at the time,” he said. But during a bad air quality day when he was 17, he had such a severe asthma attack that his lung collapsed. “I died in the ambulance. They resuscitated me, and in the hospital, they put me in a medicated coma because my lungs weren’t responding to the medicine. My doctor said, ‘If you have another asthma attack, we can’t guarantee that you’ll survive.’”

Ansari’s ordeal inspired him to pursue the work he does now with VCAN, even though living in the Mon Valley poses risks to his health. “I’ve made up my mind that I’m OK dying here,” he said. “So long as I use my life and the time that I have to raise as much awareness as I can.”

Everyone’s Got to Breathe

When the January hearing dates were announced in December, environmental groups and residents asked the health department to postpone the hearings, pointing to the short notice and the fact that U.S. Steel recently agreed to a deal to sell to the Japanese company Nippon Steel for more than $14 billion. Mehalik said they had not received a response to their request.

The hearings had no virtual option for attendance, and at the Jan. 10 hearing, the stenographer couldn’t make it at the last minute, leaving those who testified worried about whether the department had a full record of their remarks. There were also problems with registration for speakers, Ansari said. “There were residents who signed up and weren’t able to even testify this time,” he said.

Mehalik said that years of delays in the processing of the Coke Works Title V permit and others in Allegheny County amounted to “gross negligence on the part of an air regulator.” The Coke Works’ previous Title V permit, issued by the Allegheny County Health Department in 2012, expired in 2017.

The ACHD was audited by the EPA, which oversees Title V permits, in 2017. This audit found that 41 percent of the department’s permits were backlogged due to “permitting workloads exceeding staffing levels.”

“That department is chronically underfunded,” Campbell, GASP’s executive director, said.

The Allegheny County communications department did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Some observers suspected that the health department was trying to clear its permit backlog before a new county executive, Sara Innamorato, was sworn in on Jan. 2. “They pushed it out during an administration change in the middle of winter over a holiday period, and made it difficult for community members to show up and participate,” Mehalik said. “Moving quickly to get permits updated shouldn’t be coming at the expense of the quality of the permit itself.”

In the fall of 2023, the EPA rejected the health department’s proposed permit from 2022 after environmental groups including GASP, the Clean Air Council, and PennFuture filed a petition. The draft being debated at the January hearings was the result of revisions the department made after that decision. Neither side is happy with the draft now: Environmental advocates said that it still fell short on compliance and monitoring requirements and contained errors, while U.S. Steel and its supporters argued that it went too far, overstepping the intended regulatory purpose of these permits.

At the Jan. 10 hearing, where each speaker was given three minutes, Mehalik argued that “the history of paying fines instead of reducing emission problems indicates a willingness of U.S. Steel to operate the Coke Works in a pay-to-pollute relationship with ACHD,” calling the draft “inadequate,” according to a recording of the hearing made by Ana Hoffman, director of air quality engagement at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab. During her turn to speak, Meade asked the health department to “please consider our public health. … That is your job. And that’s all we’re asking.”

“The air is cleaner than it has been at any time since the start of the Industrial Revolution,” said Jeff Nobers, the executive director of Pittsburgh Works, a business organization of labor interests as well as manufacturing companies, including U.S. Steel. He said that the debate over the permit was being driven by environmental groups’ desire to “eliminate heavy industry here and elsewhere in the country.”

One U.S. Steel employee at the hearing asked if the real motivation behind the Title V permit hearings is to “shut down the Clairton Coke Plant, cost 3,000 Pittsburgh employees their jobs and to eliminate the roughly $4.6 billion of economic output in our region.”

The mayor of Clairton, Richard Lattanzi, who works for U.S. Steel as a safety inspector, said that he believed the pollution had improved. “I have a lot of family, friends and trusted constituents here that I care about and I will do everything possible to keep them safe,” he said. “I live very close to the mill. And there has been a significant improvement in regards to emissions and air quality.”

In a statement, the U.S. Steel representative, Amanda Malkowski, outlined the company’s objections to the permit draft.

“U.S. Steel seeks a collaborative working relationship with ACHD. However, we are opposed to the department’s proposed changes to the existing Title V permit,” she said.  “We believe ACHD has overstepped its rulemaking authority by imposing restrictions with no legal or technical justification. More than 3,000 Mon Valley Works employees strive each day to ensure their role in the steelmaking process is done in the safest and most environmentally responsible manner.”

Despite the timing of the hearings, dozens of people showed up, Ansari said, and the majority of them spoke against U.S. Steel, a contrast to earlier Title V hearings when U.S. Steel union employees and officials from other towns came in greater numbers.

The Nippon sale had angered the union, the United Steelworkers, Ansari said, and company incentives to attend these hearings “weren’t enough this time around.” “There were people on Facebook Marketplace selling their U.S. Steel helmets when the news broke,” he said. “It’s almost like when LeBron left Cleveland and everyone was burning his jersey.”

Ansari attributed the increased attendance at the hearings to VCAN’s efforts to educate residents about the technicalities of the permit and what it means for their daily lives. Still, he wondered how much their voices would matter in the long run. “If we gave 12,000 comments and all of them were against U.S. Steel, I still don’t think that would be enough for them to change what they’re doing,” he said.

“It’s just frustrating when we have these processes in place where we’re supposed to work together and agree on things that are for the benefit of the community,” he said, and yet the county did not appear to be listening to its constituents, even when they spoke clearly about what they wanted. “I feel like this is something that we can unite on,” he said. “Everyone’s got to breathe.”

“I’ve never felt heard by the health department. It’s always felt like a show for me, a waste of energy and time,” Meade said. But she said she testified at the hearing because she felt that it was important for residents to speak out against the narratives of local politicians and U.S. Steel, even if it appeared not to have any immediate effect. “If you are silent about your pain,” she said, quoting Zora Neale Hurston, “they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

The Writing on the Wall

As the permitting process drags on, Clairton Coke Works has continued to rack up air quality violations and fines, including a $2.2 million penalty for hydrogen sulfides exceedances just last month. The ACHD must now respond to the comments from the hearings before updating the draft again and sending it to the EPA, all of which could take months. Meanwhile, the future of the plant is uncertain.

“I don’t view this facility existing for forever,” Campbell said. “It’s been so neglected in terms of maintenance for so many decades, and I can only imagine the sheer cost of bringing the facility up to basic maintenance standards.”

Mehalik said that he thought the plant might last another 10 years if that. “The handwriting is on the wall,” he said, for a plant that relies on coal, especially with the sale to Nippon, which must undergo a U.S. national security review before it can be finalized, looming. The press release announcing the sale emphasized the companies’ shared “decarbonization focus.” “My heart wants to think it will shut down,” Meade said. “But if I were to hold on to that I would get sick.”

In 2021, U.S. Steel retracted a plan to invest $1.5 billion in modernizing its Mon Valley facilities, a move that many in the region saw as confirmation that the company did not intend to keep operating those sites long-term. With the sale to Nippon, the Coke Works’ fate seems sealed.

What that will mean for Clairton is unclear. Ansari said he expected that health outcomes in the community would improve if the plant closed, but that cleaning up the Coke Works site would likely take years, and he was unsure how the town would navigate repurposing the site. “It will be a bumpy ride,” he said. Discussions about what to do if and when the plant was gone weren’t taking place, he said, because that possibility was too uncomfortable to face.

“Clairton has given everything to the plant, and the plant has given very little back to Clairton,” Ansari said. “I think Clairton has a little bit of Stockholm syndrome. We love our abuser. It’s wrapped into our identity. That smell from the coking process—the sulfur dioxide—reminds people of home. It goes deep.”

Imagining what Clairton could become without the Coke Works feels unfathomable when Clairton has always seen itself as an extension of the plant. “I think it’s going to take some honest, hard conversations to look at where we actually are, not where we hope we could be,” he said. “The sooner the town wakes up and does that, the better off we’ll be.”

Ansari was reminded of the immensity of that challenge when he was at the latest hearing in Clairton. He saw the city crest, which is an illustration of the steel mill framed against a sky of stars and puffy clouds and bordered by a Latin motto that means “looking forward to the morning.”

“When I was at this hearing, there’s a big crest of Clairton in the background, and the city crest has the plant in it. You see the barges, the bridges, the plant,” he said, “but there’s no town.”

The post In a Steel Town Outside Pittsburgh, an Old Fight Over Air Quality Drags On appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

New draft documents from the European Commission said the EU must invest about $1.64 trillion a year starting in 2031 to achieve its net-zero goal, the Financial Times reported.

“The EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050 – an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. This objective is at the heart of the European Green Deal, and is a legally binding target thanks to the European Climate Law,” the European Commission has said. “All parts of society and economic sectors will play a role – from the power sector to industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and forestry.”

The document expressed that the big investment is meant to lower the price of inaction as global heating ramps up, reported the Financial Times. And if global temperatures can be kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or cooler, the EU could save $2.61 trillion from 2031 to 2050 and reduce net fossil fuel import costs by $3.05 trillion.

Some in the agriculture and industry sectors have said the requirements of the EU’s climate law are too strict considering the increased inflation and lingering effects of the energy crisis.

The document draft said the green transition presents an “opportunity” for the EU to become a “leading force in the clean technology sectors, stabilise energy bills, create the good jobs of the future, improve our quality of life, and protect ourselves against the worst effects of climate-related hazards,” according to the Financial Times.

The document said the EU’s electricity sector would need to be almost entirely decarbonized by about 2040 in order to achieve the target. There would also need to be an overall fossil fuel consumption reduction of 85 percent along with a transition to green industries. And to get to a goal of a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, there would need to be “close to” a $718 billion annual investment from 2031 to 2050.

Much of the investment would be in the underdeveloped technology of carbon capture to trap residual emissions. Another draft addressing carbon management said 496 million tons must be captured each year by 2050 in order to achieve net zero.

The new document mentions that the use of fertilizers, livestock breeding and other agricultural activities are predicted to become the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the EU.

The executive arm of the EU is set to publish the document on February 6. It will help inform the establishment of the 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution — a goal for emissions reductions in the bloc that is required to be agreed upon by all 27 governments leading up to next year’s United Nations COP30 climate conference.

The post Draft EU Plan Would See Fossil Fuel Consumption Fall 85% by 2040 appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.