While we favor a circular economy without landfilling or WTE/Incineration the nature of society (and consuming) does create waste that cannot be avoided or recycled. In that case waste should first be made inert, toxics destroyed, and materials and energy recovered so that landfilling, the worst option for dealing with waste, can be avoided by all means possible. A circular economy is essential for sustainable development and the continued existence of human society. When landfilled,…
Unfortunately, these extreme events, and the conditions they foster – flooding, wildfires, property damage, loss of life – are becoming the new normal, thanks to global warming. And there are other, less obvious but equally damaging, effects as well. As the ocean warms and becomes more saturated with carbon dioxide, fish and other creatures in the marine food chain are adversely affected. Diseases once limited to the tropics are spreading into the temperate zones. Coastlines, from Louisiana to Alaska, are receding, due to more frequent and more powerful storms, rising sea levels, and, in Alaska, the loss of sea ice. The message should be clear: we are running out of time to turn this trend around. Even insurance companies have stopped insuring the homes in particularly affected areas.
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What can be done now to reduce emissions relatively quickly? The answer is simple: the US must stop landfilling untreated municipal solid waste. A recent (July, 2020) article in the journal Environmental Health and Safety stated that with regard to waste management, “Landfilling is the most greenhouse gas (GHG)-intensive option, emitting nearly 400 kg CO2e per tonne of organic waste…the GHG footprint of landfilling organic waste is higher relative to composting or waste-to-energy by as much as a factor of 9, even when landfill gas is captured and utilized.”
A new design of wind turbine has broken the world record for the most amount of power generated in a 24-hour period.
Siemens Gamesa said its 14-222 DD offshore prototype generated 359 megawatt-hours in just one day – enough to power 18,000 households or a Tesla Model 3 for more than a million miles.
The renewable energy breakthrough was achieved using a set of “revolutionary” blades that are cast in a single piece of recyclable resin.
…The German oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf writes: “We have enough ice on Earth to raise sea levels by 65 metres – about the height of a 20-storey building – and, at the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose by 120 metres as a result of about 5C of warming.” Taken together, these figures give us a perspective on the powers we are dealing with. Sea-level rise will not remain a question of centimetres for very long.
..Saving the world is voluntary. You could certainly argue against that statement from a moral point of view, but the fact remains: there are no laws or restrictions in place that will force anyone to take the necessary steps towards safeguarding our future living conditions on planet Earth. This is troublesome from many perspectives, not least because – as much as I hate to admit it – Beyoncé was wrong. It is not girls who run the world. It is run by politicians, corporations and financial interests – mainly represented by white, privileged, middle-aged, straight cis men. And it turns out most of them are terribly ill suited for the job. This may not come as a big surprise. After all, the purpose of a company is not to save the world – it is to make a profit. Or, rather, it is to make as much profit as it possibly can in order to keep shareholders and market interests happy….
Compared to 2001, fires are now causing 3 million more hectares (7.4 million acres) of tree cover loss per year, amounting to an area larger than Belgium. In 2021, fires were responsible for more than one-third of all tree cover loss for the year, making it one of the worst years on record.
Russia, Canada, the U.S., Brazil and Australia had the highest tree cover loss due to fire over the past 20 years.
The GFW analysis of fire data from the Global Land Analysis & Discovery (GLAD) lab at the University of Maryland was released Aug. 17 and built upon a study on forest loss due to fire from 2001 through 2019 published earlier this year. These analyses provide the most up-to-date and highest-resolution look at global stand-replacing fires.