This Land Was Your Land
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon coined the term “deconstruction of the administrative state,” to describe efforts to take power away from the federal government and allow business a freer hand in development. Nowhere is that policy being carried out more systematically than in the Trump administration’s actions on public lands, where the businesses seeking that freer hand are primarily the oil and gas extraction, logging, and mining industries.
According to a study in the journal Science, the Trump administration is responsible for the largest reduction of protected public lands in history. Three months after taking office, Trump issued an executive order that led to dramatic reductions in the size of two national monuments in Utah — Bears Ears National Monument, shrunk by 85 percent, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, shrunk by 51 percent.
“There’s a quiet, almost covert, effort to dismantle the public lands management infrastructure,” said Jim Lyons, who was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior Department in the Obama administration. “It’s very effective. I call it evil genius.”
“They are remarkably effective,” Lyons said of the administration’s public lands team. “It’s like Humpty Dumpty, and it will take a long time to put the pieces back together. It will set conservation back a generation or two.”
Yes, It Was Hot
And, it’s getting hotter every year. 2019’s summer yielded two of the three hottest months ever recorded and one was the second hottest month ever. So, when it snows in Washington this winter a Republican senator and the president will claim that the snow is proof that global warming is a Chinese hoax. Just a predictable as the weather those Republicans.
September 2019 was the hottest September on record, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service reported Friday. This makes it the fourth month in a row this year to be the hottest or near hottest of its kind.
June 2019 was the hottest June on record, July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded and August was the second-hottest August, according to Copernicus data reported by The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang.
"The recent series of record-breaking temperatures is an alarming reminder of the long-term warming trend that can be observed on a global level. With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future," Jean-Noël Thépaut, director of Copernicus at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement reported by The Washington Post.
Plastics In Health Care
Even the most basic medical process or procedure generates significant plastic waste. And, much like the rest of the plastic waste we generate, it is becoming much more difficult to find a safe method of reuse or even disposal. Some of this material could easily be replaced with sustainable items that would actually reduce the cost of health care.
Practice Greenhealth, a non-profit that works to make hospitals more sustainable, estimates that 25 percent of the waste generated by a hospital is plastic. A study on a single hysterectomy found that the procedure can produce up to 20 pounds of waste, most of which is plastic.
Increasingly, say medical care providers, the unfettered use of plastic is conflicting with a doctor’s promise to do no harm, but in facilities awash in blood and pathogens, is avoiding plastic even possible?
In a survey of 332 hospitals that has not yet been published, Practice Greenhealth looked at common single-use plastic items in operating rooms that had been successfully replaced by reusable items. Tools like surgical basins and sterilization wraps could be reused and would reduce waste by several tons per year. Depending on where they cut back, hospitals could also save thousands of dollars a year, Practice Greenhealth says.
Ban SUVs
Another German import is on the way: banning SUVs from public streets and roads. I will believe that Americans are ready to actually address the climate crisis when two things happen: meat consumption drops and SUV sales plummet. Until then, we are just pretending to care. Electric SUVs will reduce CO2 generation at the tailpipe, but they won’t reduce the amount of energy and material required to build these rolling fortresses. Nor, will that mitigate the safety hazards caused by mixing these monsters with regular sized cars, cyclists and pedestrians.
SUVs are a paradox: while many people buy them to feel safer, they are statistically less safe than regular cars, both for those inside and those outside the vehicle. A person is 11% more likely to die in a crash inside an SUV than a regular saloon. Studies show they lull drivers into a false sense of security, encouraging them to take greater risks. Their height makes them twice as likely to roll in crashes and twice as likely to kill pedestrians by inflicting greater upper body and head injuries, as opposed to lower limb injuries people have a greater chance of surviving. Originally modelled from trucks, they are often exempt from the kinds of safety standards applied to passenger vehicles…
Last year was the deadliest for US pedestrians since 1990, with 6,000 deaths nationwide. The growth in SUV sales, which account for 63% of passenger vehicle sales, is partly to blame. Pedestrian crashes involving SUVs increased 81% between 2009 and 2016, according to the IIHS. A report by the Governors Highway Safety Association found that while pedestrian deaths in collisions with cars increased 30% from 2013 to 2017, those involving SUVs increased by 50%.
Racing Scared
Formula One (F1) is the (self-proclaimed) pinnacle of auto racing. The cars are the most technologically sophisticated and expensive vehicles in the world. Major auto manufactures (Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault) spend as much as half a billion dollars per year to operate their F1 teams. As a racing series, F1 holds races around the world including in iconic venus such as the streets of Monte Carlo. But, F1 finds itself at a critical juncture — how will a racing competition of internal combustion powered cars be viewed as technological leaders in an electric vehicle world?
Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul said the championship is being in danger of losing relevance unless it starts planning for a formula that is more relevant to the future of road cars, and at the same time is cost effective for the manufacturers.
"If I look the pace at which the world is changing, in my opinion there is a huge risk that F1 is left behind," said Abiteboul.
"Look at the Greta Thunbergs of this world, look at electrification.
"Things that people are saying today that they would not even have considered six months ago - Ferrari talking about a full electric car.
"So the world is moving at a very fast pace, and we have to be very careful not to be left behind the road car industry.
"Whatever we think of electrification, it's not going to go away.
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