“Toxic air will shorten children’s lives by 20 months, study reveals”

• This article is about the impact of toxic air from pollution on the health of people, specifically focusing on the lifespan of children and the number of months they will lose. While the article addresses a global average, it specifies that those in underdeveloped countries will have more months taken off than more developed countries; for example, South Asian children are expected to lose an average of 30 months from their lifespan, whereas children from the United States are more likely to lose four or five months. This is occurring due to air pollution both indoors and outdoors from PM2.5, which is a size of particulate notorious for causing health issues. This major study was just released this year yet does not make clear the numbers for comparison. While there are specific areas that are more affected than others, this issue is global and affects everyone. The cause of this toxic air comes from industrialization in underdeveloped countries and factors like reliance on solid fuel. For richer countries, the ground-level ozone creates similar pollution due to traffic and other industrial processes.
• This article is incredibly relevant to society, as it acts as statistical data to prove pollution is creating issues upon society. It also brings an urgency to the problem of air pollution; future generations will continue to suffer if the issue is not confronted soon. By looking at the graphs provided, it shows that toxic air pollution is about equivalent to death rate as tobacco smoking, which is alarming as well.
• This is relevant to environmental sustainability, as it shows a connection between the triple bottom line. Society suffers because politicians do not want to address the overall environmental issues that are occurring. This negligence is what has allowed air pollution to cause so many deaths and create as much damage as it has.
• Some questions this article raised for me were: How does a carbon emissions ban play a part in this and how is the outcome affected? Does the number of months lost correlate to specific states in the United States, as in do some states have lower number of months lost compared to the general country’s average? Lastly, what is this data being compared to come to this conclusion? It is a rather alarming statement, so an initial study would be useful to have.

Works Cited

Harvey, Fiona. “Toxic Air Will Shorten Children’s Lives by 20 Months, Study Reveals.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Apr. 2019, www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/03/toxic-air-will-shorten-childrens-lives-by-20-months-study-reveals.

Title: Study Finds Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution

Link:https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/01/708818581/growing-corn-is-a-major-contributor-to-air-pollution-study-finds

Citation:
Lambert, J. (2019, April 01). Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution, Study Finds. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/01/708818581/growing-corn-is-a-major-contributor-to-air-pollution-study-find

Main Ideas:

• Food production creates around a quarter of global greenhouse emissions.
• In this report it talks about how the food we eat contributes to the quality of the air we breathe.
• Air pollution is one of the largest environmental health risk factors in the U.S.
• Astudy published in Nature Sustainabilitymodeled how the production of a single crop. In this case corn, contributes to air pollution in the U.S. The researchers found that corn production accounts for 4,300 premature deaths related to air pollution every year. This is a significant amount.
• Ammonia from the fertilizer application was by far the largest contributor to corn’s air pollution footprint.
• Corn is the largest agricultural crop in the U.S. Researchers wanted to find out where most of the impact from corn production happen on the farm or upstream in the supply chain.
• To find out, they used a detailed life cycle model that describes the different stages of the corn supply chain.
• They studied every stage of the process, like fertilizer production, running tractors and tilling land.
• This all accounts for about 16 percent of all human-caused air pollution
• Exposure to these examples have beenassociated with cardiovascular problems, respiratory illness, diabetes and even birth defects.
• After studying emissions, they found that growing corn in Minnesota will result in emissions in Florida.
• With this data, the researchers modeled how corn production emissions contribute to air pollution on a county-by-county basis and mapped those data onto census data to understand who’s exposed to these emissions.
• 86% of emissions happen on farms and the rest occurred elsewhere in the supply chain, according to the study.
• The main cause was fertilizer application.
• Like I said earlier Ammonia from fertilizer application accounted for about 70% of attributable deaths
• The nitrogen in fertilizers helps fuel plant growth, but not all of it can be used by the plant. “Some of that nitrogen washes into waterways, and some of it gets released into the atmosphere as ammonia
• It is estimated that air quality-related health damages cost $39 billion annually.
• The top five corn-producing states show that 54% of the deaths associated with air pollution is caused by corn production.
• In areas with lower yields or that were closer to major citiesshow that damages of corn actually exceed its market price.
• Researchers suggest that the producing of corn is more damaging than the economic benefit it provides.
• It is believed that the total contribution of corn to air pollution is higher because this study didn’t consider what is done with the corn after it gets produced. Much of the corn produced in the U.S. goes to feed livestock, which has its own contributions to air pollution.

 Questions:

• What other foods do we produce that might also have this effect on the environment?
• What can we do to help cut back on these emissions?
• What can we use as an alternative to corn? What can we feed our livestock instead?
• How can we get this information out to the public? So, they can make more informative decisions about what we eat.

News Report Take-away

i) Article Title:

Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’

ii) Citation and Link:

Carrington, D. (2019, February 10). Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

iii) Main ideas:

• Source: The Guardian
• The questions:
  • What: rapid decline in population
  • Who: insects
  • Where: globally
  • When: over past half century
  • Why/how: intensive agriculture, urbanization, climate change
• Relevance to society: without insects, ecosystems across the globe would collapse
• Relevance to the course: this decline is caused by factors that we have studied in this class
• Questions raised:
  • How can this global decline be stopped, or can it even be stopped?

Talking points:

• More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered
• The rate of extinction is eight times faster than for mammals, birds, and reptiles
• Total mass is falling 2.5% per year, it is estimated that they could vanish within a century
• Report comes from the journal Biological Conservation, written by Francisco Sanchez-Bayo at University of Sydney, Australia and Kris Wyckhuys at China Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing
• Planet is at the start of the 6^thmass extinction, but larger animals are easier to study
• Insects are the most varied and abundant animals, outweigh humans by 17 times
• Insects are essential for all ecosystems because as food for other animals, pollinators, and recyclers of nutrients
• Large scale collapses have been reported in Puerto Rico and Germany but the issue is global
• Intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides
• Urbanization and climate change are also factors
• One of biggest impacts is loss of food for birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and fish
• 98% fall in ground insects in Puerto Rico the past 35 years
• Butterfly and moths among worst hit, butterfly species fell by 58% in UK from 2000-2009
• Bees also seriously affected, only half of bumblebee species in Oklahoma from 1949 present in 2013
• 6 million honeybee colonies in US in 1947, 3.5 million have been lost since
• Beetles are in decline too, not much is known about flies, ants, crickets, etc. but there is no reason to believe they are faring better
• Small number of adaptive species are increasing in number, but they do not outweigh the losses
• Common eastern bumblebee is increasing in US due to tolerance to insecticides
• Decline that began in the 1950s or 60s has been accelerated over the past few decades by new classes of insecticides such as neonicotinoids and fipronil
• Most of the lost in tropical areas without agriculture attributed to climate change
• Unusually strong language used in the review was not “alarmist”, they just need people to wake up

Title:

US Judge Halts Hundreds of Drilling Projects in Groundbreaking Climate Change Ruling

Link:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/20/judge-halts-drilling-climate-change-trump-administration

Citation:

Randall, C. (2019, March 20). US judge halts hundreds of drilling projects in groundbreaking climate change ruling. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/201 9/mar/20/judge-halts-drilling-climate-change-trump-administration

Main Ideas:

• Drilling on 300,000 acres in Wyoming has been stopped after a judge ruled that environmental laws concerning greenhouse gas emissions weren’t being considered on March 20th, 2019
• Bureau of Land Management was told they must consider the greenhouse gas emissions on oil and gas projects in 2016, but failed to adequately predict potential outcomes of their new project
• Some argue it is difficult to predict possible outcomes of this project and similar projects
• New drilling projects are increasing at higher rates under the Trump administration than the previous Obama administration
• This ruling went against previous precedents that had been set by other judges potentially creating a new precedent for future casesRelevance:

  The judge went against previous precedents in an attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change. In class, we have talked about the need for policy change along with lifestyle changes to limit the release of pollutants into the Earth. This judge is making sure that current environmental laws are being enforced and bringing up the idea that more laws are needed to adequately regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

  Questions:

  • Are current environmental laws being enforced properly?
  • What laws need to be passed in the future to prevent courts from having to step in to evaluate the environmental impacts of projects? Do we need more enforcement or new laws?
  • How do we switch from fossil fuels as the main source of energy to renewable energy sources?

Title of Article:

“Legal Rights for Lake Erie? Voters in Ohio City Will Decide” (The New York Times)

Citation:

Williams, Timothy. “Legal Rights for Lake Erie? Voters in Ohio City Will Decide.” The New York Times, 17 February 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/lake-erie-legal-rights.html.

Main Ideas:

• Who: Voters in Toledo, Ohio
• What: Voters will decide if legal rights of existing, flourishing, and evolving belong to Lake Erie
• Why: Environmental issues like algae blooms and farm runoff pose threats to Lake Erie that disrupt the ecosystem and prevent citizens from receiving clean water
• When: Special city election on February 26, 2019
• Where: Toledo, Ohio
• How: Voters will answer the ballot question on granting legal rights to Lake Erie at the special city election

Impact:

• The ballot question is a result from efforts showing that current environmental protection laws are insufficient in protecting nature and ecosystems.  
• The proposed bill would allow people to sue polluters of the lake based on its legal right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”
• While paving the way for other elements of nature to gain legal rights, the bill would also harm the local economy by closing local farms and costing the city money to defend the bill in court without the guarantee that it will survive legal review.

Relevance to course:

• This article discusses the granting of legal rights to elements of nature, which we recently discussed in class.  
• The article also mentions the interconnectedness of different aspects behind the proposed bill, such as the need for greater environmental protection along with the potential negative effects on the local economy.

Questions raised:

• Will the proposed bill be passed by the citizens on the special election?
• If it is passed, will it survive legal review?
• What is the timeframe of undergoing legal review?
• How will this impact Toledo’s local economy?
• How will this impact other areas of the country if the bill is passed?

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