Extreme heat stress is affecting much of Europe at record rates, according to a new report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

According to the European State of the Climate 2023 report, temperatures in Europe were consistently high, with higher than average temperatures for 11 months last year. The report also noted that for 2023, Europe experienced its warmest September on record.

Further, the report found that there is an increasing number of days with heat stress in Europe, alongside a decreasing number of days with cold stress. There were a record number of days in 2023 with “extreme heat stress,” defined as days with a temperature that feels higher than 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

While the number of days with extreme heat stress is rising, so too are the number of deaths linked to heat stress. According to the report, heat-related deaths increased by an estimated 94% in Europe over the past 20 years.

The findings revealed increasing heat waves as well, with a reported 23 of the 30 most severe heat waves in Europe happening since 2000, and five of the most extreme heat waves happening in just the past three years.

“If humans continue to burn oil, gas and coal, heatwaves will continue to get hotter and vulnerable people will continue to die,” Friederike Otto, a climate scientist with Imperial College London who was not a report contributor, told The Guardian. Otto also told the publication that the number of deaths could possibly be even higher because of fossil fuel emissions.

The report showed other extreme events linked to climate change happening in Europe during 2023, such as a loss of about 10% of the remaining volume of glaciers in the Alps, fewer than average snow days in parts of Europe and record-high sea surface temperatures around the continent.

“In 2023, Europe witnessed the largest wildfire ever recorded, one of the wettest years, severe marine heatwaves and widespread devastating flooding,” Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S, said in a statement. “Temperatures continue to increase, making our data ever more vital in preparing for the impacts of climate change.”

Overall, Europe was revealed in the report to be the fastest-warming continent, heating up about twice the average rate of the rest of the world.

While the report did reveal concerning data linked to climate change and raise concerns over public health, it also included some good news linked to renewable energy. As WMO reported, Europe reached a record 43% proportion of renewable electricity generation.

With the increase in storm activity in late fall and early winter, there was added wind power production potential, according to the report. Increased precipitation and river flow also boosted energy generation potential from hydropower. Some parts of Europe also benefited from higher than usual solar energy generation potential.

The report highlighted that reducing emissions and curbing climate change, in part through a focus on renewables, will be important in avoiding worsening heat waves, ice melt, flooding and other extreme events.

“Robust environmental information, underpinned by data from the European Union’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme, is revealing significant changes across our planet,” Mauro Facchini, head of unit for Earth Observation at the Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space of the European Commission, said in a statement. “The data presented in the European State of the Climate are alarming, but this research is also a vital tool in our aims to transition towards sustainable energy, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, and become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.”

The post Extreme Heat Stress in Europe Hit Record Levels in 2023, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN.

For years, Maureen Penjueli, who is Indigenous iTaukei from Fiji, has watched her home country survive devastating cyclones and flooding caused by unusually heavy rainfall. She watched as the coastal village of Vunidogoloa was forced to relocate inland to escape rising seas, and as the long-time head of the nongovernmental advocacy group Pacific Network on Globalization, Penjueli knows climate change will mean more extreme weather events for her Pacific island home. 

Still, Penjueli is skeptical when she hears “clean energy” touted as a solution to the climate crisis. She thinks of the clear blue waters surrounding Fiji and how companies are eager to scrape the seafloor for potato-shaped nodules rich with minerals that could be used to build electric cars in wealthy countries, and she worries her iTaukei people will face consequences from any deep-sea mining pollution.

“It’s super critical that people understand that the transition is anything but just, and anything but equitable,” said Penjueli. 

That’s why this month, Penjueli flew from Suva, Fiji, to New York City to meet with fellow Indigenous activists ahead of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, the largest annual global gathering of Indigenous peoples. Officially, this year’s forum is focused on self-determination for Indigenous youth, but climate change looms large: On opening day, the outgoing UNPFII chair shared a new report on the green transition, raising another alarm about the risks Indigenous peoples and their lands face not only from climate change, but also the projects intended to counteract global warming.

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“The current green economy model is a problem rather than a solution for many Indigenous Peoples,” the report said. “The concept of a transition to a green economy maintains the same extractive logic that causes States and the private sector to overlook the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples in pursuit of national interests.” 

In Guatemala, a court recently found that a nickel mine is violating Native land rights; In Norway and the U.S., Indigenous peoples have weathered ongoing fights with green energy developers; and Indigenous Igorot from the Philippines are worried about displacement from nickel mining.

“We actually support the transition away from fossil fuels to green energy and we need to do it fast,” said Joan Carling, who is Igorot from the Philippines and serves as executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Indigenous Peoples Rights International. ‘“But if we do it fast by ignoring and violating the rights of Indigenous peoples, we will not be able to address the climate crisis effectively.”

More than half of the world’s minerals that could serve as alternative energy sources and help countries stop burning fossil fuels — known as transition minerals — are located on or near lands and territories managed by Indigenous peoples, according to a 2023 study in Nature Sustainability. These include lithium, cobalt, nickel, uranium, and many other critical minerals that would require extractive mining with myriad environmental impacts. 

Those impacts are why Carling helped organize the Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Just Transition, the two-day gathering that Penjueli attended just prior to the forum. After a weekend of discussions, the group came up with a statement urging state governments, investors and corporations, and energy utilities and regulators to respect Indigenous rights.

They called for a ban on deep-sea mining, as well as any mining at sacred sites and reminded government officials that Indigenous peoples have the right to consent to projects on their land freely and before projects get underway, and that they also have the right to say no. Lack of consent has long been a problem with development and many see the green energy industry continuing the same trend of not doing enough to inform Indigenous communities about upcoming projects, and prioritizing profits over human rights. 

The group’s statement was part of a broader message repeated throughout the auditoriums, conference rooms, and hallways of the United Nations this last week: The “green economy” isn’t working for Indigenous peoples. “Clean energy” isn’t actually clean. And the world’s shift to a mineral-based energy economy is coming at the expense of Indigenous peoples and their lands. It’s a message that’s been shared many times before but is gaining urgency as the energy transition accelerates, fueled by billions in funding from China, the U.S., United Kingdom, and European Union.

In the U.N.-commissioned report on the greening economy, experts called for compensation for Indigenous peoples’ communities who are affected by pollution and environmental destruction from green energy operations. They said long-term economic planning should take place when mining begins in case the operations affect other industries that Native peoples rely on — for example, if pollution from deep-sea mining harms fisheries, an economic driver in many Pacific island countries. Experts also called for sharing project revenues after obtaining consent.

“If an Indigenous Peoples’ community chooses to engage in benefit-sharing, any such agreement should be based on future annual revenues so that the community receives half or more than half of the percentage of total revenues for the duration of the project,” the report said. 

They emphasized the need for direct funding for Indigenous peoples who are managing lands and territories that are home to 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity and urged state governments and corporations to see Native peoples as partners and not obstacles to the transition away from fossil fuels.

The report’s authors also criticized how the terminology surrounding the movement away from fossil fuels obfuscates the problems of the transition. “The term ‘just economy’ is no more than a slogan from the perspective of most Indigenous Peoples,” the report said. 

Darío Mejia Montalvo, outgoing chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said that such terminology hides Indigenous peoples’ lack of involvement in these changes. 

“Indigenous peoples do not believe that many of the measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change that have been suggested will ultimately solve climate change, because the final result of these policies ultimately ends up harming Indigenous peoples,” he said. 

That’s what Penjueli fears. She worries about the lack of knowledge about the environmental effects of removing minerals from the ocean floor and wonders what would happen if something goes wrong: Where would Fiji come up with the money for an environmental cleanup and restitution? And what would happen to the fish that her people rely on to eat?

She says it doesn’t make sense for the world to switch from a strategy of bottomless consumption through burning fossil fuels to a similar consumption model based on mineral mining. Already, reports describe the waste of critical minerals: Even as more mines are dug and more lands cleared, millions of metric tons of copper and aluminum are being discarded every year in landfills instead of being repurposed for renewable energy development. The European Council, which sets political priorities in the European Union, has set a nonbinding goal that by 2030, a quarter of “critical raw materials” consumed should be recycled materials, but experts say more could be done to repurpose these valuable minerals. 

But what’s most frustrating to Penjueli is the idea that her people must sacrifice to save the world. It reminds her of how other Pacific peoples were told to sacrifice for world peace, when global powers tested nuclear weapons. 

“It’s super problematic that we supposedly have to carry the burden of this transition,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous advocates at the UN say the green transition is neither clean nor just on Apr 23, 2024.

Clean energy, like so many commodities in this country, is neither distributed evenly nor equally. Disadvantaged communities have far fewer solar panels arrayed across their rooftops than areas with higher incomes. The federal government just took a major step toward crossing that chasm.

On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the 60 organizations that, under the administration’s Solar for All program, will receive a combined $7 billion in grants to bring residential solar to low-income neighborhoods. The funding will flow into state, municipal, and tribal governments as well as nonprofits to support existing programs for low-income solar and battery storage installations and spur new ones. Such efforts are expected to bring affordable clean energy to 900,000 households.

While the climate and environmental benefits of this effort are critical, the households poised to benefit will feel the most immediate impacts on their pocketbooks.

“Low-income families can spend up to 30 percent of their paychecks on their energy bills,” Biden said while announcing the funding in Virginia. “It’s outrageous.”

That reality is central to the administration’s program, which will cut energy costs for those families who monitor their spending to ensure they can make it to the end of the month. By bringing rooftop and community solar to communities in need, Solar for All could save energy-burdened families on average $400 a year.

The 60 recipients were selected by dozens of review panels composed of experts from across the executive branch. The Environmental Protection Agency will finalize contract details in the days and weeks ahead, and awardees are expected to receive the funding in summer to begin implementing their efforts.

Without the low-income solar programs that will be established and expanded with these funds, most families can’t afford to place energy-producing panels atop their homes. Most rooftop installations cost tens of thousands of dollars, and even with a long-term loan and the promise of a year-end tax credit to help cover a steep upfront cost, that places the technology out of reach for many Americans.

As Solar for All brings energy savings to low-income and disadvantaged families nationwide — advancing Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure that at least 40 percent of climate investments directly benefit frontline communities — it will also accelerate progress toward the administration’s goal of achieving 100 percent clean energy nationwide by 2035. The EPA estimates that the $7 billion will underwrite 4 gigawatts of solar installations nationwide, enough to power more than 3 million homes. All told, the program is expected to prevent over 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from ever entering the atmosphere while also creating 200,000 jobs and affording tribal nations an improved path to energy sovereignty.

For years, Indigenous communities across America have been using solar and other renewables to liberate themselves from an energy system that pollutes their air and establish something that they own. With $500 million slated specifically for tribal governments, Solar for All can help accelerate those efforts. One such award for over $135 million will go to the Northern Plains Tribal Coalition, a partnership of 14 Indigenous nations brought together by the Native-led nonprofit Indigenized Energy and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.

“This is a once-in-a-generation award that will begin to transform how tribes achieve energy sovereignty,” Cody Two Bears, executive director of Indigenized Energy, said in a press release. “The shift from extractive energy to regenerative energy systems will be the legacy we leave for our future generations.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s ‘Solar for All’ awards $7B to bring affordable energy to low-income families on Apr 23, 2024.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Sign up for WBEZ newsletters to get local news you can trust.

Last week, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation began efforts to reestablish the only federal Indian reservation in Illinois, formally confirming the tribe’s governance over its land. The move could have wide-ranging impacts on matters ranging from criminal justice to climate and environmental jurisdiction.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi have spent years purchasing land in northern Illinois where the Shab-eh-nay Reservation once existed, and last week, the nation turned 130 acres of those lands over to the Department of Interior, or DOI, to hold in trust — a bureaucratic process that legally establishes tribal governance and opens tribes up to a range of benefits including tax credits, federal contract preferences, and land use exemptions.

“Now those lands are subject to our laws, our jurisdiction, and the nation determines what — if any — actions will happen on those lands,” said Joseph Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and fourth-generation great-grandson of Chief Shab-eh-nay, the original reservation’s namesake. 

In the early 18th century, as the United States expanded westward, the federal government took massive swaths of land from Indigenous nations throughout the Midwest, including from the Prairie Band Potawatomi, via armed conflicts and nearly a dozen skewed treaties. 

The 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien with the nation reserved land in present-day northern Illinois for Chief Shab-eh-nay and the Prairie Band, where they remained for another two decades. However, in 1849, Shab-eh-nay left the reservation to visit Kansas and on his return found that the state had taken his land and home and illegally auctioned it. “The state of Illinois said he abandoned his land and sold it,” said Rupnick.

Tribes relinquished millions of acres in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin to the federal government by the mid 1800s, and nations in the region were eventually removed from the state to lands west of the Mississippi River. The Prairie Band has spent nearly a century working to reclaim those lands, paying to buy land back acre-by-acre. “Congress never took any action to disestablish that reservation,” said Rupnick. “So in our minds, it still exists.”

Last year, federal legislation was introduced to redress that seizure of Potawatomi land, and companion bills promised cash settlements to the band to reacquire additional lands in and around the original reservation’s boundaries. The proposed bill would also waive the band’s historical claims to the vast majority of its former territory.

“The decision to put portions of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation into trust is an important step to returning the land that is rightfully theirs,” said U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood, a co-sponsor of the bill. “I am so honored to represent the first federally recognized reservation in Illinois.”

Efforts to make the band whole have also been ongoing at the state level, too. 

“It’s well overdue,” said Illinois State Representative Mark Walker, the sponsor of a bill lawmakers are currently considering that would turn over Shabbona Lake State Park, just over 1,500 acres inside the historic footprint of the reservation, to the Prairie Band Potawatomi nation.

That means it’s now up to the tribe to take over jurisdiction of the land, everything from law enforcement to natural resource management. 

“At this time, we have various options for utilizing the trust lands, and no immediate changes have been decided upon,” according to a spokesperson for the tribe. 

In an email statement from DOI, a spokesman confirmed the transfer and continued, “It is the department’s policy to acquire land in trust for tribes to strengthen self-determination and sovereignty, and to ensure that every tribe has protected homelands where its citizens can maintain their tribal existence and way of life.”

“I have pictures of my great-grandmother and my grandmother coming up here in the ’60s trying to fight for this land,” Rupnick said. He wasn’t sure he’d live to see this day. “To have it actually happen today is amazing.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Acre by acre, the Prairie Band Potawatomi bought back their land on Apr 23, 2024.

Jeans are a staple in many people’s wardrobes, something we wear all the time and…

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Have you ever noticed that meadows of long grass seem to be teeming with butterflies, bumble bees, beetles, crickets and other insects? Meanwhile, short-cropped, bright green lawns appear devoid of critters in comparison.

A six-year study of butterfly sightings in 600 gardens in the United Kingdom has confirmed that letting your lawn grow wild can significantly increase butterfly and moth numbers.

“Nature is in crisis; 80% of butterflies have declined since the 1970s, so we need to take action now to protect them. We wanted to be able to give tried and tested gardening advice that will benefit butterflies as we know lots of people want to help. This study proves, for the first time, that allowing a patch of grass to grow long will attract more butterflies into your garden,” said Dr. Richard Fox, co-author of the study and head of science at UK nonprofit Butterfly Conservation, in a press release from the charity.

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Fox and fellow Butterfly Conservation researcher Dr. Lisbeth Hordley found that letting long grass in your garden grow can boost butterfly numbers by as much as 93 percent, while attracting a greater variety of species.

The researchers were assisted in their Garden Butterfly Survey by citizen scientists throughout the UK.

The biggest benefits to garden rewilding were found in intensively farmed areas and urban spaces. Gardens with long grass in highly arable areas had as much as 93 percent more butterflies, while urban landscapes saw an increase of 18 percent.

“The potential to provide wild spaces for butterflies and moths to thrive is huge. Gardens make up more than 728,000 hectares in Great Britain — the equivalent of over a million football pitches. If each of these gardens had a space that was allowed to go a little wild, with grass growing long, it would make a huge difference for butterflies and moths, providing spaces for them to feed, breed and shelter,” Butterfly Conservation advised.

The study looked specifically at gardens, but the benefits of wild spaces and long grass for butterflies are likely applicable to other green spaces like parks, small fruit and vegetable patches, the grounds of schools and strips of grass and vegetation between sidewalks and roadways. These areas could become important wildlife refuges if allowed to flourish.

“The simple act of creating wild spaces by allowing a patch of grass to grow long, or a border edge to go wild is free and easy to do, and can significantly boost butterfly numbers, especially in urban and agricultural settings where they are most under pressure. The benefits of each individual wild space are small, but if thousands of people get involved the boost to butterflies could be huge,” Fox said in the press release.

The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Fox and Hordley found that flowering ivy in particular increased populations of specific butterfly species like Red Admiral, Comma and Holly Blue, which breed in ivy habitat and use it as a source of nectar.

They also discovered that long grass attracts more species with caterpillars who eat grasses, including gatekeepers, meadow browns, speckled woods, small skippers and ringlets, reported The Guardian.

Fox said this pointed to population increases not being just from the availability of wildflower nectar found in the grasses, but because the butterflies were seeking out or breeding in lawns that had been allowed to grow.

“It’s a really positive sign,” Fox said, as The Guardian reported. “What people are doing with long grass in gardens is creating potential or actual breeding habitat. In order to make an impact on the biodiversity crisis we need to be creating places where butterflies and other wildlife can breed. This is simple, doesn’t cost anything and saves you time and effort. If you have a patch of long grass you may have grasshoppers, beetles and ant hills as well – there will be all these spinoffs.”

Butterfly Conservation has a goal of transforming 100,000 areas in the UK to help butterfly populations through its Wild Spaces initiative.

The wildlife nonprofit is asking everyone to support butterfly and biodiversity recovery by creating their own wild spaces, whether large or small. These can be on patios, terraces and balconies or in gardens and shared local spaces.

“Whether you have a large garden, a small patch of grass, a community or school space, or a balcony or window box, anyone, anywhere can help. We hope that our Wild Spaces programme will inspire people across the UK to take action and help to create a national network of butterfly-friendly habitats,” Fox said in the press release.

The post Letting Your Grass Grow Wild Boosts Butterfly Numbers, UK Study Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

You can now apply to be one of the first members of the American Climate Corps. President Joe Biden declared that the program was open for applications on Monday with 273 jobs currently listed on the White House’s website, including coastal conservation in Florida, stream restoration in Montana, and forest management in the Sierra Nevada. The administration said the number of openings will soon reach 2,000, with positions spanning 36 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

“You’ll get paid to fight climate change, learning how to install those solar panels, fight wildfires, rebuild wetlands, weatherize homes, and so much more,” Biden said at a press conference on Monday at Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park, originally built in 1936 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, a model for the Biden administration’s new program. “It’s going to protect the environment to build a clean energy economy.”

It’s part of an Earth Day-related policy push from Biden, who also announced $7 billion in grants to install solar power and reduce energy costs for 900,000 low-income and disadvantaged households. The moves might appeal to the young people who were crucial to Biden’s 2020 victory over President Donald Trump and who, according to polls, have been souring on his performance in the White House. But this same demographic supports climate action, according to a poll taken last week by CBS News and YouGov, with more than three-quarters of those surveyed from both parties saying they wanted the U.S. to take steps to address climate change. 

Monday’s announcements also offered a glimpse into what climate corps positions might be available in the future, as the White House looks to employ 20,000 people in the program’s first year, with a target of 200,000 in five years. A new partnership with TradesFutures, a nonprofit construction company, suggests that members could help fill the country’s shortage of skilled workers who can install low-carbon technologies like electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps, while at the same time gaining skills toward getting good-paying jobs. The White House is also planning to place American Climate Corps members in so-called “energy communities” — such as former coal-mining towns — to help with projects like environmental remediation.

The pay for the listed jobs ranges dramatically depending on location and the experience required. On the lower end, coastal restoration jobs in Puerto Rico offer the equivalent of $12.50 an hour. On the upper end, a position for a biological technician in Idaho that requires experience in identifying plants and managing invasive species pays $23 an hour. The lengths of the terms are all over the place, with some as short as two or three months, though most last at least several months, and the website says that some jobs can be extended or renewed.

Biden first announced that he planned to revive a version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps during his first days in office in 2021. But the program took a while to get off the ground after its funding got cut during negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill Biden signed in 2022. In time, the Biden administration cobbled together funding from a bunch of different agencies to start the program, but it’s much smaller than climate advocates had hoped. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York and Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts had called for 1.5 million jobs over a span of five years in legislation introduced in 2021.

Still, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated the corps’ official arrival at the press conference on Monday. “People said then it was impossible,” she said. “We knew an American Climate Corps wasn’t impossible because our country has done this before … What we needed, though, was the political will.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The American Climate Corps is now hiring on Apr 22, 2024.

President Joe Biden will celebrate Earth Day with the announcement of $7 billion in residential solar grants through the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All program.

The program will save recipients roughly $400 a year on their energy bills and create 200,000 jobs, a press release from the White House said.

The program is in line with the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of directing 40 percent of federal benefits for green energy investments to disadvantaged communities, reported Reuters.

“We’re opening up a market where everybody, no matter their zip code or their economic background can tap into the savings opportunity that clean energy represents,” said a senior administration official on Friday, as Reuters reported.

Funding for Solar for All comes from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

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The announcement will be made during the president’s visit to Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park, a national park developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Biden will also announce the opening of applications to the American Climate Corps, which helps prepare young people for climate-related jobs.

Applicants to the program can access the 2,000 available positions across the U.S. and Puerto Rico here.

The climate corps will offer training on the installation of solar panels, restoration of mangrove ecosystems, operating methane emissions detection cameras and other climate-related jobs.

“These positions are hosted by hundreds of organizations advancing clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience,” the press release said.

The first climate corps class begins in June.

The Solar for All grants will result in power for nearly one million low-income households, reported Reuters.

“The selectees will provide funds to states, territories, Tribes, municipalities, and nonprofits across the country to develop long-lasting solar programs that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from distributed residential solar,” the press release said. “The program also advances the President’s Justice40 Initiative, which set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”

Recipients of the Solar for All grants include 60 local and state agencies, as well as nonprofits that have programs to assist residents of poorer communities with going solar. Some of the winners have plans to bring solar to Native American residences in Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, Reuters reported.

Residential solar has historically been hard to access for low-income people due to the high upfront cost of solar and because they often rent their homes.

“Selectees under the Solar for All program will serve every state and territory in the nation and deliver residential solar power to over 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities, saving overburdened households more than $350 million in electricity costs annually… and avoiding more than 30 million metric tons of carbon pollution over the next 25 years,” the press release said.

This week, the administration will share other developments in its climate change agenda.

“Throughout Earth Week, the Biden-Harris Administration will announce additional actions to build a stronger, healthier future for all: Tuesday will focus on helping ensure clean water for all communities; Wednesday will focus on accelerating America’s clean transportation future; Thursday will focus on steps to cut pollution from the power sector while strengthening America’s electricity grid; and Friday will focus on providing cleaner air and healthier schools for all children,” the press release said.

The post Biden to Announce $7 Billion in Rooftop Solar Grants to Power Nearly 1 Million Households appeared first on EcoWatch.

A new study has found high concentrations of perfluoroalkyl acids, or PFAA, in sea spray. In fact, researchers noted that the levels of PFAAs in sea spray aerosols were even higher than in seawater itself, and the researchers estimated that emissions of PFAAs from sea spray could be even greater than those in the atmosphere from manufacturing sources and other known polluters.

The study looked at PFAAs that are remobilized from seawater into sea spray via field studies of the Atlantic Ocean between the UK and Chile, The Guardian reported. Researchers Bo Sha and Jana Johansson used a sea spray emulator and worked from a ship for two months, according to Sha. They found that PFAA concentrations in the sea spray were over 100,000 times greater than the amount of PFAAs in the water itself. The team of researchers published their findings in the journal Science Advances.

“The common belief is that PFAS drain from the land into the oceans where they stay to be diluted into the deep oceans over the timescale of decades,” Ian Cousins, co-author of the study and professor at the Stockholm University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, said in a statement. “But we’ve now demonstrated in multiple studies that there’s a boomerang effect, and some of the toxic PFAS are re-emitted to air, transported long distances and then deposited back onto land.”

PFAAs are the most-studied subgroup of PFAS and have been previously found in rainwater, a previous study by the same research team found. PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) are chemical compounds that do not break down in the environment and have been linked to human health risks, including elevated risks of certain types of cancer, as well as potential environmental impacts as they bioaccumulate in wildlife. PFAAs in particular are common in firefighting foams, food packaging and waterproof and stain-repellent materials, as explained by Science Direct. 

Scientists are continuing to try to understand the long-term impacts of PFAS in the atmosphere, so the latest findings of high PFAA concentrations in sea spray provide more information of how PFAA accumulates near the surface of the ocean and then release into the atmosphere from sea spray aerosols. From there, the researchers warned that the PFAAs can be transported back to land, forming a cycle of PFAAs moving from land to sea and back again.

According to the study authors, an estimated 49 tons of PFOA and 26 tons of PFOS are emitted each year from sea spray aerosols, compared to an estimated 1 to 1.4 tons of PFOS emitted into the air annually from industrial sources. The amount of PFOA emissions from sea spray is also comparable to the up to 74 tons of PFOA in the atmosphere from various known emitters as of 2012, the authors wrote in the study.

The scientists noted that these findings raise health concerns for people in coastal regions. They also suggested that their estimates in the study could fall short of the actual amount of PFAAs moving through to coastal regions.

“These findings have implications for human exposure to PFAAs, especially in coastal regions, and this merits further investigation,” the study concluded. “For example, our estimates include neither the contribution of shoreline wave breaking to the atmospheric burden of PFAAs nor the influence of the higher concentrations of PFAAs generally found in coastal regions. As such, our estimates on the deposition of PFAAs to coastal regions following their remobilization through SSA are likely to be conservative.”

The post High Levels of PFAA (Subgroup of PFAS) Found in Sea Spray appeared first on EcoWatch.