Earth Wise

It is perhaps surprising to learn that more land is now being abandoned by farming than converted to it. In fact, abandonment of rural lands has become one of the most dramatic planet-wide changes of the modern era, affecting millions of square miles of land.

In part, it is due to rural flight driven by the economic, social, and educational appeal of cities.  It is also a result of climate change and the globalization of the food supply chain.  The global footprint of agriculture has been decreasing over the past twenty years but the global food supply isn’t shrinking.  The lost land has generally been marginal and farming elsewhere has become more productive.

Many researchers see abandoned agricultural lands as a huge

opportunity for ecological restoration and strengthening of biodiversity.   Others see these lands as an opportunity for

a massive program to plant trees to reduce carbon dioxide in the

atmosphere.  A recent study published in Science

estimated that planting trees on abandoned agricultural lands could remove 25%

of the carbon dioxide humans have added to the atmosphere.

There are strong criticisms to all of these ideas.  In most cases, the studies don’t incorporate

the social context of why these lands are in transition, the potential effects

on local populations, whether the lands are publicly or privately owned, and

whether lands now suitable for regeneration will remain so as climate change

advances.

Current government initiatives on degraded lands typically lack even

rudimentary planning.  There are real

opportunities presented by the vast amounts of abandoned agricultural lands,

but there are many caveats and many issues to confront.  As a society, we have barely begun to even think

about what to do.

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Web Links

Could Abandoned Agricultural Lands Help Save the Planet?

Photo, posted May 9, 2010. courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A data center is a building, dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and data storage systems.  Data centers are the backbone of internet services and cloud computing, which together are increasingly dominant elements of modern life.

Energy use is a central issue for data centers. Power used by them ranges from a few kilowatts for a rack of servers in a closet at a local business to several tens of megawatts for large facilities. Some data centers have power densities more than 100 times that of a typical office building and use as much electricity as several thousand homes. For such facilities, electricity costs are a dominant operating expense and account for over 10% of the total cost of ownership of a data center.  These centers, with their numerous racks of computer servers, consume 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year in the United States, as much as all of our residences use for lighting. 

A research group at Princeton

University is developing a family of devices that can dramatically reduce power

consumption at data centers.  The team’s

technology focuses on the process by which the AC power from the grid is

converted to the low-voltage direct current used by computer equipment.  With existing technology, this power

conversion takes place in each individual computer, which ends up wasting about

40% of the original energy.   The new

device aggregates power conversion into a single unit, which then distributes

the power to the individual computers and storage units.

As data centers get bigger and more numerous, the opportunity to save a lot of energy becomes increasingly important.

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Web Links

New technology boosts energy efficiency in data centers

Photo, posted June 8, 2007, courtesy of Sean Ellis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

For the past century, economies and geopolitics have largely been driven by our insatiable appetite for oil and fossil fuels in general.  As we gradually make the transition to a low-carbon energy future, the focus on oil will shift to sustainable supplies of essential minerals and elements.

The use of solar panels, batteries, electric vehicle motors, wind

turbines, and fuel cells is growing rapidly around the world.  These technologies make use of cobalt,

copper, lithium, cadmium, and various rare earth elements.  The need for any one of these things may

diminish if alternatives are found, but there will continue to be a growing reliance

on multiple substances whose physical and chemical properties are essential to

the function of modern devices and technologies.

In some cases, global supplies of particular minerals and elements are

dominated by a particular country, are facing social and environmental

conflicts, or face other market issues. 

Shortages of any of them could create economic problems and derail

progress much as the oil-related energy crises of the past have.

The world faces challenges in managing the demand for low-carbon

technology minerals as well as limiting the environmental and public health

damage that might be associated with their extraction and processing.  Expanded use of recycling and reuse of rare

minerals will be essential.

As the relatively easy sources of these materials become exhausted,

other resources will become more attractive. 

These include various valuable ecosystems, oceanic deposits, and even

space-based reserves.

Ushering in the low-carbon future is not a simple matter and will

require responsible actions by the world’s governments and industries. In

undoing the damage from the oil age, we must avoid new damage from the

low-carbon age.

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Web Links

Sustainable supply of minerals and metals key to a low-carbon energy future

Photo, posted March 13, 2015, courtesy of Joyce Cory via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Spending vacation time in a disaster zone seems like a crazy idea, but so-called volunteer tourism can actually be a big help to communities trying to recover from natural disasters.  It can also be a unique and rewarding experience for the volunteers.

Such volunteer tourism should not be confused with “disaster tourism”,

the unfortunate practice of rushing to the scene of a calamity to gawk.  That is certainly no help to anyone.

When disaster strikes a destination usually frequented by tourists,

people naturally tend to stay away, leaving communities to deal with the loss

of tourism income on top of the costs of repair and recovery.

A study by UTS, a technology university in Sydney, Australia, looked

at the effects of volunteer tourism in the wake of the April 2015 earthquake in

Nepal.  They found that when it is done

in an ethical matter than takes into account local conditions and the affected

community, volunteer tourism can aid recovery and resilience.

In the months following the earthquake, most relief organizations

asked international volunteers not to come unless they had specific expertise,

such as medical skills, building skills, or emergency response experience.  Eventually, Nepal relaxed conditions to

include volunteers to help rebuild homes and schools, to intern in hospitals,

and to support NGOs and to re-establish sustainable agriculture.

According to the Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents, almost

one third of the tours booked to Nepal in the two years after the earthquake

comprised groups who combined tourism with volunteering or philanthropy.

Volunteer tourism isn’t for everyone and for every situation, but for

places that rely on tourism for their economy, building volunteer tourism into

the recovery process can be a good strategy.

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Web Links

Volunteer tourism can aid disaster recovery

Photo, posted July 2, 2015, courtesy of the World Humanitarian Summit via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Food waste is a big problem. 

According to the United Nations, approximately one-third of the food

produced globally – more than 1.4 billion tons – goes to waste.  If food waste was a country adding carbon to

the atmosphere, it would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse

gases – behind only the U.S. and China. 

All of this food waste takes place in a world where 815 million people –

more than 10% of the people on the planet – are chronically undernourished.

A new study recently published in the American Journal of Agricultural

Economics has analyzed the level of food waste for individual American

households. It found that American households waste, on average, nearly

one-third of all the food they acquire. 

This wasted food has an estimated aggregate value of $240 billion

annually.  Divided by the number of U.S.

households, this food waste could be costing the average household about $1,866

per year. 

According to researchers, the households with higher household incomes generate more food waste.  Those with healthier diets, which include more perishable fruits and vegetables, also waste more food.  

Meanwhile, households with greater food insecurity, especially those

that participate in the federal SNAP food assistance program, as well as those

households with a larger number of members, were associated with less

food waste.  Households that use shopping

lists and those that travel further to reach the grocery store were also

associated with lower levels of food waste. 

When food is wasted, the resources used to produce food, including

land, energy, water and labor, are wasted as well.  We have to do better. 

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Web Links

SAVE FOOD: Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction

US households waste nearly a third of the food they acquire

Photo, posted March 22, 2009, courtesy of Nick Saltmarsh via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Many states and countries have established goals to generate at least half of their electricity from renewable sources by some future date, typically 2030.  A number of countries have already been able to achieve 50% or greater renewable generation for brief periods measured in days.  Australia did it this past November.  Germany has seen it on occasion as well.

Denmark has managed to complete an entire year with half of its energy

coming from renewable generation.  Almost

all of it – 47% of the country’s power – came from wind turbines.

Denmark has been generating much of its energy from wind power for

quite a while and actually produced about 46% of its electricity from renewable

sources in 2017.  Denmark was a pioneer

in developing commercial wind power during the 1970s, is a major manufacturer

of wind turbines, and the small country has installed over 6,000 of them.  The gains this past year mostly came from the

Horns Rev 3 offshore wind farm that went online in the fall.  The 407 MW wind farm has the capacity to

cover the annual electricity consumption of about 425,000 households, which is

about 20% of the country.

The growth of wind power in Denmark is still ramping up.  A 600 MW wind farm in the Baltic Sea will be connected to the Danish and German electricity grid by 2021, and a wind farm of at least 800 MW capacity in the North Sea is scheduled to come online in 2025.

The Danish Parliament has passed an ambitious climate law with the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 70% in 2030 compared with 1990.  The country’s overall goal of being carbon-neutral by 2050 does not seem like a pipe dream.

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Web Links

Denmark Passes Magic 50% In Renewable Electricity Generation Milestone

Photo, posted July 12, 2009, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Animal-based agriculture has endured a great deal of criticism with regard to its contributions to climate change and its other environmental impacts.  But its contributions to a sustainable food system are by no means all bad.  In fact, livestock play important roles in sustainable, regenerative agro-food systems.

Animals’ natural biological processes enable them to consume plant and

food residues that are either indigestible by humans, unpalatable to people, or

are no longer sellable for various reasons, all referred to as IUUB

biomass.  There are many examples.

One dairy farm receives daily deliveries of apple waste from a processing facility that supplies apple slices for school lunches.  Another local dairy gets three truckloads of vegetable and fruit discards, along with expired bread products, each week.  No longer useful for consumers, these foodstuffs become feed for cattle rather than going to a landfill.  Even the booming market for plant-based foods like artificial meat for consumers has generated a surge of processing byproducts that can be consumed by livestock.

On a national scale, livestock are consuming millions of pounds of

otherwise unusable IUUB created in the production of products like soybean and

canola oils, orange juice, ethanol, and more.

While the livestock industry needs to keep working to minimize its

environmental impact and there are many reasons to eat less meat, livestock

farming is an integral part of our agro-food systems.  Farmers are embracing techniques to produce

meat, milk and eggs as efficiently and sustainably as possible, minimizing

agriculture’s climate-contributing footprint in the process.

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Web Links

Amazing Cows Hold Promise in Pioneering Sustainable Food Systems

Photo, posted May 11, 2019, courtesy of Theo Stikkelman via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

There are various ways to generate renewable energy from the world’s oceans, most obviously from the power of tides and waves.  But there is also an oceanic energy source called osmotic or “blue” energy.  Osmotic energy uses the differences in pressure and salinity between freshwater and saltwater to generate electricity. 

When freshwater and saltwater are mixed together, large amounts of energy are released. If the freshwater and seawater are then separated via a semi-permeable membrane, the freshwater will pass through the membrane and dilute the saltwater due to the chemical potential difference. This process is called osmosis. If the salt ions are captured completely by the membrane, the passing of water through the membrane will create a pressure known as osmotic pressure. This pressure can be used to generate electricity by using it to drive a turbine.  This has been demonstrated to work as far back as the 1970s, but the materials we have to use are not adequate to withstand ocean conditions over the long term and tend to break down quickly in the water.

New research, published in the journal Joule, looked to living

organisms for inspiration to develop an improved osmotic energy system.  Scientists from the U.S. and Australia

combined multiple materials to mimic the kind of high-performance membranes

that are found in living organisms.  They

created a hybrid membrane made from aramid microfibers (like those used in

Kevlar) and boron nitride.  The new

material provides both the flexibility of cartilage and the strength and

stability of bone.

The researchers believe that the low cost and high stability of the

new hybrid membrane will allow it to succeed in volatile marine environments.  They also expect the technology will be both

efficient and scalable. 

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Web Links

Inspired by the Tissues of Living Organisms, Researchers Take One Step Closer to Harvesting “Blue Energy”

Photo, posted February 14, 2017, courtesy of Marian May via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Human civilization consumes vast amounts of material.   The Circle Economy think tank actually puts some numbers on it.  According to their latest report, the amount of material consumed by humanity has passed 100 billion tons every year.  So, on average, every person on Earth uses more than 13 tons of materials per year.

That number has quadrupled since 1970, which is far faster than the

population, which has only doubled during that time.  In the past two years alone, consumption has

jumped by more than 8%.  While this has

been going on, the proportion being recycled has been falling.

Of the 100 billion tons of materials, half of the total is sand, clay,

gravel, and cement used for building, along with other minerals used for

fertilizer.  Coal, oil and gas make up

15% and metal ores 10%. The final quarter are plants and trees used for food

and fuel.  About 40% of all materials are

turned into housing.  A third of the

annual materials consumed remain in use, such as in buildings or vehicles.  But 15% is emitted into the atmosphere as

greenhouse gases and a third is treated as waste.

The global emergencies of climate change and disappearing wildlife have

been driven by the unsustainable extraction of fossil fuels, metals, building

materials, and trees.  The authors of the

report warn that if we continue to treat the world’s resources as limitless, we

are heading for a global disaster.

The Circle Economy think tank promotes the idea of a circular economy in which renewable energy supports systems where waste and pollution are reduced to zero.  Some nations are taking steps towards circular economies, while others are not.  This is a problem we can’t allow to be unaddressed.

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Web Links

World Consumes 100 Billion Tons of Materials Every Year, Report Finds

Photo, posted March 13, 2015, courtesy of Joyce Cory via Flickr.

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Many of the negative effects of air pollution are well documented.  Studies have shown that exposure to air pollution is associated with an increased risk of lung cancer, stroke, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and so on. 

Now, according to a new study in India led by the Barcelona Institute

for Global Health (ISGlobal), exposure to air pollution is also associated with

a higher risk of developing osteoporosis. 

Osteoporosis, which literally means porous bone, is a disease in which the density and quality

of bone is reduced. As bones become more porous and fragile, the risk of

fracture is greatly increased. 

The study, which surveyed 3,700 people from 28 villages in southern

India, was recently published in the medical journal Jama Network Open.     

The researchers used a model to estimate air pollution by fine particulate matter (commonly referred to as PM2.5) and black carbon at each participant’s residence.  The research team then assessed bone health using a special type of radiography (called dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry) that measures bone density.  They measured bone mass of the participants’ left hip and at the lumbar spine.

The results showed that exposure to air pollution, particularly fine

particulate matter, was associated with lower levels of bone mass.  Annual average exposure to PM2.5 was 32.8

micrograms per cubic meter, well above the maximum levels recommended by the

World Health Organization (10 micrograms per cubic meter) and the U.S. EPA (12

micrograms per cubic meter).   

The researchers say their findings add to a growing body of evidence that indicates that particulate air pollution is relevant for bone health. 

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Web Links

Air pollution can worsen bone health

Photo, posted November 15, 2019, courtesy of Ninara via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.