Daily Quick Read - October 29, 2019

Sky High Roaming Charges

(I. Karyakin/Russian Raptor Research and Conservation Network)

Apparently, this Russian research team didn’t read the fine print in their cellular contract (who does). They wired up 13 steppe eagles with SMS text based tracking devices that would text their location four times per day.  If the widely traveled birds’ devices couldn’t find a network, the messages were stored and sent when the device finally got a bar or two.  They didn’t count on at least one bird being such an explorer.

When a team of Russian researchers set out to track endangered steppe eagles using a device that sends the birds’ locations via text messages, they knew they would occasionally lose track of the birds when they flew into regions with little or no cellular coverage. Going off the grid isn’t a huge deal; usually when that happens, the messages are sent once the eagles flew back into range, which works great as long as they stay in network.

But what they didn’t plan for was Min, a globetrotting steppe eagle whose taste for adventure turned into a big international texting habit.

That’s not a problem when the birds send messages on the Kazakh or Russian networks. But when Min reappeared in early October after being out of range, the eagle did so in Iran, where roaming rates are sky-high.

The bad news is that the birds’ travel habits broke the researcher’s budget, but the good news is that after this story broke numerous phone companies have reached out to offer the project heavily discounted rates, so the birds can phone home within budget.

Greening The Big Apple

                                                                        Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times

Building a green meadow on your building’s roof isn’t cheap. This Greenpoint site cost $1.2 million for a 22,000 square foot rooftop meadow ($500,000 for structural upgrades to the building and $700,000 for the green space itself).  New York’s law mandating green spaces on new buildings should reduce the cost per square foot for installation but will still increase overall building cost.  

Green roofs like the one in Greenpoint, for instance, are expected to multiply under a city law that is set to take effect next month and will require new buildings to be topped with green spaces or solar panels. Either measure can help reduce carbon emissions and rising temperatures; green roofs also reduce storm-water runoff. Currently, the 730 green roofs in New York cover just 60 of the city’s 40,000 rooftop acres, according to the Green Roof Researchers Alliance.

Much of New York City’s potential in this regard remains untapped, experts say. But the law taking effect next month could change that.

With it, New York will join cities like Chicago, Denver and San Francisco, which use requirements or tax incentives to promote the development of green roofs. New York State also recently increased the value of the tax abatements it offers for such roofs in some city neighborhoods.

“Location, Location, Location”

Credit: "Climate and Health Benefits of Increasing Renewable Energy Deployment in the United States"

Renewable energy projects that will have the largest overall climate change and health impact need to be in places where the alternatives have the largest negative impacts.  This study suggests the most impactful renewable deployment is in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions.

"To ensure that climate policies are cost-effective, the location where renewables are built is much more important than the specific technology," said Drew Michanowicz, a study author and a research fellow at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a statement.

"If you want to get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of the health and climate benefits of renewables, investing in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions will keep populations downwind healthier while also taking important steps to decarbonize," he added.

“healthy hydration”

Is clean, drinkable water a human right or a “grocery commodity?”  Those seem to be the battle lines as local communities and environmentalist battle a giant corporation to determine who has the rights to water on public lands.  

Strawberry Creek is emblematic of the intense, complex water fights playing out around the nation between Nestlé, grassroots opposition, and government officials. At stake is control of the nation’s freshwater supply and billions in profits as Nestlé bottles America’s water then sells it back in plastic bottles. Those in opposition, like author and nutritionist Amanda Frye, increasingly view Nestlé as a corporate villain motivated by “greed”.

Ultimately, the debates’ particulars lead back to a question at the heart of issue: Should water be commodified and sold by private industry, or is it a basic human right?

Former Nestlé CEO and chairman Peter Brabeck labeled the latter viewpoint “extreme” and called water a “grocery product” that should “have a market value”. He later amended that, arguing 25 liters of water daily is a “human right”, but water used to fill a pool or wash a car shouldn’t be free. At its current pace, the world will run out of freshwater before oil, Brabeck said, and he suggests privatization is the answer.

I don’t think many people fill their pools or wash their cars with bottled water.  I know I pay for every gallon of water I use in my house.  Fortunately, I don’t have to buy my water in the grocery store.  Yet.

Pendley Controls 10% of US Land

William Perry Pendley is the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management.  As the “acting” director, he did not require Senate confirmation.  Considering his background it’s hard to imaging even a Republican Senate confirming such a wacko.  Wait, of course they would have, but the process would have been messy.  Pendley isn’t just an anti-government, anti-environment lawyer… he’s quite proud to broadcast that message even if it means consorting with neo-Nazis.

 William Perry Pendley, a top Trump administration official in charge of managing one-tenth of all land in the United States, is a past contributor to 21st Century Science & Technology, a fringe magazine of the late cult leader, convicted fraudster and paranoid conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

“If you’re writing for 21st Century Science & Technology, you’re writing for people who really had some Nazi sympathies.”  Freelance journalist Dennis King, on Pendley’s articles in a LaRouche magazine.

The magazine was also a go-to platform for the so-called “Wise-Use movement,” a group of anti-government organizations pushing to boost mining, drilling and logging on federal lands while deriding environmentalists as domestic terrorists. Pendley, a conservative lawyer with extreme anti-government and anti-environmentalism views, was a key figure in that movement as it gained momentum in the 1980s.