Daily Quick Read - August 13, 2019

Snorkeling With the Enemy

In May, leaders of 20 companies that are major consumers of single use plastics joined leaders of a variety of environmental organizations for an ocean voyage to the Bermuda and North Atlantic Gyres.  Placed in the middle of the ocean, these two disparate groups had no choice but to talk to each other.  That was the idea.  Seventy companies were invited.  Those who declined included two major fossil fuel companies.  The company representatives that did attend and the environmentalist came up with some good ideas.

 And while Greenpeace may be the most anti-corporate of the greens on board, it’s not alone: Break Free from Plastic, Upstream, Ocean Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the 5 Gyres Institute are all here to hash it out with Dow, Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nestlé Waters, GE, Colgate-Palmolive, Hasbro, Mary Kay, Kimberly-Clark, Clorox, HP, and other industry behemoths.

I sidle up to Bridget Croke, vice president of Closed Loop Partners, an impact-investment firm that steers money from corporations toward recycling innovations. Croke, who is also a pretty badass rock climber, strong-armed a lot of her clients onto the Resolute. “All of a sudden they decided they couldn’t miss it,” she says.

Considering the speed with which the world is turning against single-use plastic, showing up seems like a no-brainer. Plastic bags and bottles are becoming as socially toxic as cigarettes. Hundreds of U.S. cities, states including California and Hawaii, and countries such as China, France, Kenya, South Africa, India, and Saudi Arabia have all announced bans, and more are on the way.

"The companies that are here are smart,” says Croke. “They understand the trends coming down the pike. What business leader would say no to that opportunity?”

Well, apparently 50 of them, but never mind, the icebreaking has begun in the aft lounge, where Greenpeace and Nestlé Waters are on stage for a “Sleeping with the Enemy” panel discussion. John Hocevar, the ocean-campaigns director at Greenpeace, looks a bit spooked by the eyes of so many longtime foes. “I was just saying to someone on board, ‘Oh, the last time I was at your office I was hanging off the front of your building.’ And the last time I was at Nestlé’s office we were there with a giant trash monster.”

Oil Company Tries to Slime Witnesses

An oil company trying to intimidate witnesses.  What a shock. Last October, New York State, initiated a lawsuit against ExxonMobil.  The lawsuit contended:

Exxon engaged in "a longstanding fraudulent scheme" to deceive investors by providing false and misleading assurances that it was effectively managing the economic risks posed by increasingly stringent policies and regulations it anticipated being adopted to address climate change, the lawsuit states.

ExxonMobil has responded with all the integrity that you would expect from a fossil fuel company.  As the trial is set to begin,the company is working diligently to pressure potential witnesses to be quiet.

Prosecutors in New York are accusing ExxonMobil of trying to discourage potential witnesses from testifying about whether the oil giant misled investors over the costs it may face from future climate regulations. They asked a judge to block Exxon from making what they describe as "unreasonable" and extensive requests for documents from the witnesses.

On Thursday, Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York Supreme Court sided with the prosecutors, saying that Exxon "can't go on a gigantic, burdensome fishing expedition to exhume hundreds or thousands of documents that have no relevance to the issues in this case."

Sorry, Had to Use the Photo

Hydrogen filled airships could be the trans-ocean transportation of the future.  It’s not as crazy as it sounds.  Not only is hydrogen the source of their buoyancy, but its also a cargo that can be converted to energy at the ships destination. 

Airships were introduced in the first half of the 20th century before conventional aircraft were used for the long-range transport of cargo and passengers. Their use in cargo and passenger transport was however quickly discontinued for a number of reasons, including the risk of a hydrogen explosion – for which the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 served as a stark case in point; their lower speed compared to that of airplanes; and the lack of reliable weather forecasts. Since then, considerable advances in material sciences, our ability to forecast the weather, and the urgent need to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions, have steadily been bringing airships back into political, business, and scientific conversations as a possible transportation alternative.

The transport sector is responsible for around 25% of global CO2 emissions caused by humans. Of these emissions, 3% come from cargo ships, but this figure is expected to increase by between 50% and 250% until 2050. These projections necessitate finding new approaches to transporting cargo with a lower demand for energy and lower CO2 emissions. 

Who Needs Science?

The poisoning of the American mind continues.  If people don’t believe in scientists, then they won’t accept that climate change is real, that renewable energy can replace fossil fuels, the list goes on and on.  Right wing politics depend on emotion, not reason. 

While most Americans believe scientists should have a role in crafting government policy, the number changes dramatically when broken down along party lines, according to Pew Research Center.

A recent survey found that support for scientific influence in policy making is yet another highly partisan issue, with 73 percent of Democrats and left-leaning Independents believing scientists should have an active role in policy debates but 56 percent of Republicans saying the opposite.

The partisan differences also carry over to faith in scientists’ judgments, Pew Research found, noting that “54% of Democrats say policy decisions from scientific experts are usually better than other people’s”; by comparison, among Republicans, “Two-thirds say scientists’ policy decisions are either worse than or no different from those of other people.”

How about trust in the scientific method? Again, Democrats are more likely to believe that “the scientific method generally produces sound conclusions,” at about 70 percent. As for Republicans, 55 percent say the same, but a full 44 percent believe the scientific method “can be used to produce any conclusion the researcher wants.” 

Lions For Slaughter

South Africa depends on eco-tourism for foreign exchange revenue.  In a country with nearly 30% unemployment eco-tourism is major source of employment.  Yet, the South African government’s inability to discern eco-tourism from exploitation is a major embarrassment for the country.  Case in point captive lion breeding for canned hunting and bone harvesting.

The fact that it has the largest number of big cats in captivity in the world – anywhere north of 8 000 – across an estimated 300 facilities – is evidence of an industry out of control. It remains largely unregulated.

The Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries admits that it doesn’t know how many facilities there are. Nor does it know how many predators are in captivity.

Captive breeding is permissible under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The trade in products arising from it is permitted under an annotation. But the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – the world’s foremost conservation body – has unequivocally called for its termination.

The South African government has been slow to act against the industry despite significant welfare concerns. These include the fact that regular practices include removing cubs born in captivity from their mothers a few hours after birth. And that they are regularly sold into the captive-origin (canned) hunting industry after they’ve outlived their usefulness, or sold directly into the Asian tiger bone trade.