If They Can Do This, Why Can’t the US?
Panama bans plastic bags made of polyethylene effective 2020. Supermarkets, pharmacies and retailers in Panama must stop using traditional polyethylene plastic bags immediately, while wholesale stores will have until 2020 to conform to the policy approved in 2018. Fines can be applied for non-compliance but there are exceptions for the use of plastic bags for sanitary reasons, such as with raw food.Costa Rica bans the import or sale of polystyrene effective 2021.
Signed into law earlier this week, it will come into effect in 2021, the same year the government has said the country will become the first plastic-free and carbon-free country in the world.
Polystyrene, commonly known as “styrofoam” in the US, is widely used for packaging and transporting food due to its lightness, low production costs and because it is hygienic.
However, it is not biodegradable and instead the crumbly material quickly breaks down into damaging microplastics which easily enter waterways and the ocean where they are consumed by marine creatures.
Berkeley Turns Off the Gas
Berkeley, California will be the first US city to ban natural gas hook-ups in new buildings. The ordinance goes into effect next year. It is mostly symbolic as it will not impact existing natural gas installations, only applying to about 1% of buildings in the city. Still….it is a first step.
Berkeley this week became the first city in the United States to ban natural, fossil gas hook-ups in new buildings.
The landmark ordinance was passed into law on Tuesday, after being approved unanimously by the city council the previous week amid resounding public support.
Although Berkeley may be pushing the vanguard, the city is hardly alone. Governments across the US and Europe are looking at strategies to phase out gas. In California alone, dozens of cities and counties are considering eliminating fossil fuel hook-ups to power stoves and heat homes in new buildings, while California state agencies pencil out new rules and regulations that would slash emissions.
Running Out of Water
Water from the Colorado River basin supports 40 million people and what, as a stand-alone, would be the world’s fifth largest economy. A new plan for the use of the basin’s water needs to be hammered out over the next 18 months. The 1922 compact that has been the governing agreement for the use of the water is based on two fatal flaws. Flaws that will be exacerbated by climate change.
From the beginning, Fleck and Kuhn argue in their new book, “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained The Colorado River,” scientists warned about promising water to too many people in the Southwest, but were sidelined by politicians looking to grow crops and cities. That led to inflated figures in the compact that plague water managers today. The original sin was putting more water on paper than existed in the real world.
A 1922 compact split the Colorado River into two legal and geographic entities: an Upper and Lower Basin. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico make the Upper Basin. California, Arizona and Nevada make the Lower Basin. The document promised each basin 7.5 million acre feet of water each year. That water is then split among the states that make up the basins. A later agreement promised Mexico 1.5 million acre feet of water from the river, without specifying which basin was responsible for delivering it.
In order to get the compact signed, Upper Basin and Lower Basin leaders agreed to measure the river’s flows at a place just downstream of modern day Glen Canyon Dam and use it as a point of reference. If the amount of water measured at that specific point ever dipped below the contracted amount in subsequent years, the Lower Basin could call for its water, shutting off users in the Upper Basin if need be.
Do Elephants Belong in Zoos?
African countries are effectively selling young, primarily breeding age female, elephants to zoos. In part because captive breeding of elephants is problematic. These are some of the best zoos in the world and according to this article they are failing elephants.
Wild herds can roam up to 50 miles a day, the seemingly disparate members bound to one another not only by intense lifelong familial and social bonds but also by keenly honed senses and communicative skills. In proximity, herd members speak through a variety of vocalizations, everything from low-frequency rumbles to higher-pitched trumpeting, and through gestures: slight anglings of the head, body and feet, or the subtle waving of their trunks. Over greater distances, they rely on ground vibrations felt through finely tuned sensors in the padding of their feet. If harm comes to a herd member, all the others react, like the tentacles of a just-brushed anemone. A herd as far away as a hundred miles from a cull — the brutal practice of gunning down elephants in those areas where their numbers interfere with human settlements — can both emit and hear alarm calls outside our ears’ register about the unfolding cataclysm. In the aftermath of such slaughters, when the body parts are locked away in sheds for later sale, other elephants have been known to return to break in and retrieve the remains for proper burials.
Two Condor Chicks Hatched in Utah
The births of the 1000th and 1001st California condor chicks have been confirmed. Biologists rappelled off a cliff in Utah to confirm the events.
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| Zion National Park |
Biologists estimate that the 1,000th and 1,001st chicks hatched in May this year, but they were only able to confirm their existence over the past several days, because the raptors build their nests inside caves carved into steep, sometimes inaccessible cliffs.
“You know, condors can be secretive,” said Janice After noticing that one condor couple seemed to be taking shifts scavenging for food, “we suspected that they’d hatched a new chick”, Stroud-Settles said. Field researchers eventually captured a photo of the 1,000th chick after rappelling off a cliff across from the birds’ nest cave. “When we confirmed it … it was just this feeling of overwhelming joy,” she said.Stroud-Settles, a wildlife biologist at Zion National Park in Utah.
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