The negotiations produced no particularly big wins. There is still no agreement on a common, global method to measure and identify mercury-contaminated waste from industrial sources, like chemical manufacturers or oil and gas operators. Mercury can still also be purchased online and traded internationally, and states could not agree on when to pull it from tooth fillings. 

But there were some successes: Nations have agreed to ban the use of mercury as a preservative in cosmetics by 2025 as well as to increase support for Indigenous peoples in future negotiations.

Mercury — the silvery, highly toxic heavy metal — still poses a serious environmental and health threat around the world, and last week, world leaders met in Geneva for five days of negotiations in a bid to control mercury pollution, trade, and use. Mercury is used in a range of products including skin-lightening cosmetics, batteries, fluorescent lighting, pesticides, and dental amalgams to fill cavities. It’s also a byproduct of coal-fired power plants and waste incineration. 

A decade ago, the United Nations adopted the Minamata Convention on Mercury to eliminate the effects of the chemical on people and the environment. Named after Minamata Bay in Japan, where mercury-tainted wastewater poisoned more than 2,000 people in the 1950s and ’60s, the debilitating illness was dubbed Minamata disease with symptoms including hearing and speech impairment, loss of coordination, muscle weakness, and vision impairment. Exposure to mercury produces significant, adverse neurological and health effects, especially in fetuses and infants. Human exposure to the chemical typically comes from eating contaminated fish where the chemical bioaccumulates, dental amalgams, and occupational exposure at jobs where mercury is present, like in mines, waste facilities, and dentists’ offices.

The goal of the Minamata Convention, which was adopted in 2013 and became legally binding in 2017, is to eventually eliminate the use of mercury. The convention has led to the phaseout of a wide range of products that contained the chemical, like batteries, compact fluorescent lights, pesticides, thermometers, and other measurement devices, while industrial processes that relied heavily on mercury, like the production of chlorine, are now almost nonexistent. Today, the world trade in mercury has dropped significantly.

But there is still demand for the chemical. The biggest driver of the mercury market by far is artisanal and small-scale gold-mining operations, where one of the fastest, most cost-effective ways to extract gold from ore is to mix it with mercury, separating gold powder and flecks from low-quality deposits. Artisanal and small-scale gold-mining operations account for nearly 20 percent of the world’s gold supply, which means the rise and fall of the mercury trade is driven by demand for gold. 

These operations are particularly prevalent in the Amazon, Indonesia, and western Africa, and release 35 percent of all mercury pollution to the environment, creating newly toxic sites at rates that vastly outpace cleanup efforts and impacting both Indigenous peoples as well as local communities. Representatives from Latin American, the Caribbean, Australia, and Canada noted that both Indigenous peoples, as well as local communities, are particularly vulnerable to mercury exposure and are among the first to face serious health and environmental impacts from mercury pollution owing to their close relationships with the environment.

Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario, Canada, for instance, has seen three generations of mercury exposure. In the 1960s and ’70s, a paper mill dumped nearly 10 tons of mercury into the river the First Nation relies on for fish. A recent study linked high rates of attempted suicide among Indigenous youth to intergenerational mercury exposure. In California, historic mines leftover from the gold rush in the mid-1800s pose public health, land management, and environmental challenges to tribal, state, and federal agencies. 

Where countries have banded together to tackle the issue of mercury, reaching international consensus is, unsurprisingly, difficult. No consensus could be made on the question of mercury-waste thresholds: how much mercury can be in waste that countries export. 

The agreement made this last week is 15 milligrams per kilo, and while experts say the number is tolerable for the time being and could likely come down in the future, the greatest concern among advocates is around the adoption of an “opt-out clause” around waste.

“What that’s done is open the floodgates for any country, if they don’t want to use 15 milligrams a kilo, to use any threshold they like, any measurement technique they like, any classification system they like,” said Lee Bell, policy advisor for the International Pollutants Elimination Network. “It’s now, effectively, a free-for-all where any country can declare, or not declare, certain types of waste to be mercury waste.”

According to Bell, this has massive impacts on the movement of waste across international borders.

Say a country in the Global North has set a mercury threshold limit of 25 milligrams per kilo. That number is deemed safe because the country in question has effective waste-management measures in place that protect the environment and human health. Because of these standards, if this country exports waste that tests at, say, 20 milligrams per kilo, they don’t have to declare it as mercury waste. It’s safe, by national standards.

That makes it possible to ship to a country in the Global South where the threshold may be significantly lower, like 15 milligrams per kilo. But because the country of origin doesn’t have to label its exported waste as mercury waste due to its own national standards, the country receiving the waste doesn’t know what’s in it.

“It pushes the onus onto the importing country to spend the money to do the testing once the material has already arrived,” said Bell. “If 15 milligrams a kilo was applied in the country of export and the country of import, they would both know what material they were dealing with, it’s apples and apples.”

The opt-out effectively derails any legally binding language in the treaty and undermines the agreed-upon 15 milligram threshold, but is helpful in illustrating the divide at meetings like this: Countries in the Global North tend to have interests rooted in economic interests and industries, while those in the Global South are typically more concerned about protecting their citizens from those Northern interests. 

Then there’s the matter of dentistry. Mercury is still used in tooth fillings, and in the United States, some of the most common recipients of dental amalgams are low-income children of color, prisoners, members of the military, and Indian Health Service patients. While the science behind the safety of these fillings has been inconsistent, to date, nearly 40 countries have generally banned the use of dental amalgams or set hard dates of complete phaseouts, while another 40 have phased down the use of mercury fillings in children under 15 years old, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women. Stopping the use of dental amalgams would also have impacts on the supply chain.

While most countries, including the U.S., are working to phase down dental amalgam use, this COP5 did not produce hard dates for a complete phaseout, although one positive outcome is that states must now develop plans on how they will phase down mercury fillings and report back to the convention. 

But more broadly, one reason many countries have failed to make progress on this concerns the possibility of litigation. 

“It comes down to this issue of admitting that it was harmful all along,” said Bell. “There’s a strong defense of the current position, so what you’re seeing is more of an incremental position where they want to phase it down and slowly bring supplies down over time.”

In the long run, that means there is no firm date on when that might take place and won’t be discussed until the next round of negotiations in two years.

There was one bright spot this week though: World leaders agreed to broaden the participation of Indigenous peoples at future meetings, acknowledging that the impacts of mercury, particularly due to mining, have disproportionate impacts on Indigenous peoples. It’s a vague reference to the potential for a funding mechanism to get more Indigenous peoples to future negotiations, but a significant one for future representatives.

“We’re encouraged that there is increased support from states, as well as recognition of our unique political status,” said Rochelle Diver, U.N. environmental treaties coordinator for the International Indian Treaty Council. “Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by legal and illegal gold-mining, making future generations intensely vulnerable to mercury’s toxic legacy.”

The next meeting will take place in 2025. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Mercury is still an environmental threat on Nov 9, 2023.

The world’s biggest producers of fossil fuels aren’t letting go of dirty energy just yet. In fact, most of them plan to keep producing coal, oil, and natural gas for decades to come, despite signs that demand for dirty energy will peak this decade.

That’s the conclusion of a major United Nations report that analyzes the production plans of 20 major fossil fuel-producing countries ahead of the COP28 climate conference in Abu Dhabi. The report finds that these countries plan to extract more than twice the amount of coal, oil, and gas by 2030 than what is needed to limit warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and around 70 percent more than would limit warming to 2 degrees C. These are the two key warming targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, beyond which climate impacts will hit catastrophic levels.

António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, described the report’s findings as, “a startling indictment of runaway climate carelessness.”

The report, which shows almost no movement away from oil and gas, is likely to strengthen calls for an agreement to “phase out” fossil fuels at COP28. Major fossil fuel-producing countries have rejected such language before, but negotiators from the European Union have said they plan to make another push for stronger language this year at Abu Dhabi.

“Despite governments around the world signing up to ambitious net zero targets, global coal, oil, and gas production are all still increasing while planned reductions are nowhere near enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” Angela Picciariello, a researcher at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a leading climate research organization, said in a statement. “This widening gulf between governments’ rhetoric and their actions is not only undermining their authority but increasing the risk to us all.”

Almost all the countries profiled in the report have announced plans to slash or even zero out carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and several have spent billions of dollars to encourage a domestic energy transition to renewables, but almost all of them are still planning to maintain or even increase extraction activities on their own turf over the same period. If they follow through on those plans the world will cross the 1.5 degrees C warming threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement. The authors of the report refer to this discrepancy as the “production gap.”

There are two main trends behind the gap. First, the report projects that the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Russia will all continue to produce around the same amount of oil in 2050 as they do today, and developing countries such as Guyana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will likely start producing more oil at the same time, leading to a rise in the production of both fuels over the next few decades. These projections are based on estimates of future production from each country’s national government.

The second trend is that a smaller number of countries are still planning to produce massive amounts of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and one that has been on the wane in the United States and Europe. Large emitters like China, India, and Indonesia, all of which are using coal to meet rapidly rising energy demand, have said they intend to give up the fuel slowly rather than all at once. This is in stark contrast to the “near total phase-out of global coal production and use by 2040” that the report says is necessary.

Both these trends have dire implications for the climate. In order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels, the world has to adhere to what experts call a “carbon budget,” limiting the amount of coal, oil, and gas that we burn over the coming decades. If the 20 countries profiled in the report end up producing all the fossil fuels they say they will, the world will blow through that budget.  

The gap may be even bigger than it seems at first. Most models for how the world can limit warming to 1.5 degrees C rely on big assumptions about carbon capture and sequestration technology to help ease the transition away from fossil fuels. In theory, direct-air capture machines and carbon sinks such as forests and peatlands can suck greenhouse gasses out of the air, which allows for a little wiggle room as countries try to give up gas-fired power plants and gasoline vehicles. But many of these carbon capture technologies are untested, and the report cautions against relying on them.

The potential failure of these measures to become sufficiently viable at scale, the non-climatic near-term harms of fossil fuels, and other lines of evidence, call for an even more rapid global phase-out of all fossil fuels,” the authors write.

The most concerning part of the report is that it’s not even clear who would buy all these fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for oil and gas is likely to plateau or decline before the end of the decade, and solar energy is already cheaper than coal and even natural gas in many places. Yet big producers’ plans for fossil fuel extraction have not changed to accommodate the growing speed of the energy transition.

“Despite these encouraging signs, the overall size of the production gap…has not discernibly changed,” the authors write.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world is doubling down on fossil fuels even as global demand peaks on Nov 8, 2023.

Quick Key Facts

1. A drought happens when little-to-no precipitation occurs in a given area for a considerable time period. A drought can also characterize an area receiving precipitation far below its particular average.
2. Droughts are ranked on a scale from D0 – D4, with D0 being more of an alert of potential drought and D4 indicating the harshest types of drought.
3. Droughts can alter an ecosystem’s carbon, nutrient and water cycles, as well as impede plant growth, kill wildlife and open the door for outbreaks of vegetation-harming insects and fungi.
4. As climate change continues, higher temperatures and heavier rains are expected to increase in frequency and duration, meaning flash floods and droughts could become more common.
5. Droughts have a negative effect on both chronic and acute human health problems and can exacerbate heat-related concerns. 
6. Droughts drive wild animals into greater competition for limited food and water, in some cases forcing them to enter human spaces to get the resources they need to survive.
7. Hydropower production is diminished when water levels decrease, but it isn’t the only energy source that needs stable water availability.
8. Xeriscaping, or landscaping with plants that don’t need much supplemental watering in your area, is one way to reduce water demand and help mitigate the impact of droughts.
9. Rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse also help reduce the harm caused by droughts by recycling and repurposing as much water as possible.
10. Local and state governments can implement water efficiency standards and maximum water use limits to help reduce the impact of active or potential droughts.

What Is a Drought?

A meteorological drought is when there is a severe lack of precipitation in a given area for a notable amount of time. But as the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska explains, whether or not an area is experiencing a drought is “in relation to the average conditions for a region.”

“Meteorological drought is region-specific since precipitation is highly variable from region to region,” the center notes. “For example, a location in Florida may receive more rainfall during a drought than a location in New Mexico receives during an entire year.”

The center notes that there are several other subtypes of droughts, including socioeconomic droughts, which occur when economic activities, like hydroelectric dams, are disrupted because of a lack of water. In parts of the world that rely on wintertime snow to provide water through the following seasons, like in the Upper Missouri River basin of the U.S., snowdroughts can result from lower snowpack totals that subsequently lead to lower water levels.

A drought can last as little as a few weeks or as long as a few years. According to the National Weather Service, “there have been at least three major U.S. droughts in the last 100 years,” two of which lasted between five to seven years. The severity of a drought is denoted with a D0 – D4 scale, with D4 being the most intense types of droughts and D0 serving as an alert of potential drought because of abnormally dry conditions.

After lengthy, severe periods of drought, an area can experience desertification, meaning the existing ecosystem transitions to a desert devoid of the plant life it once hosted.

A report issued by the United Nations last year found that the frequency and duration of droughts had increased 29% from 2000  and that up to 75% of the global population could face water shortages at least one month per year by 2050.

How Does Drought Affect an Ecosystem?

Naturally, less precipitation means drier conditions throughout an environment. And since water is required for plants to grow and wildlife to survive, droughts have a profound impact on the viability of an ecosystem. The National Integrated Drought Information System says that droughts can interrupt the delicate balance of our carbon, nutrient and water cycles, in addition to stymying plant growth and causing wildlife death or even extirpation, which is the local extinction of a given species.

Those same conditions also lead to dry, infertile soils and vegetation, which when paired with windy days can fuel wildfires, destroying forests and homes.

“Drought and persistent heat set the stage for extraordinary wildfire seasons from 2020 to 2022 across many western states, with all three years far surpassing the average of 1.2 million acres burned since 2016,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Scientists have also found links between lengthier periods of hot, dry conditions and fungi and insect outbreaks, which in turn further stress or decimate vegetation.

How Are Drought and Climate Change Connected?

As climate change continues, higher temperatures are expected to become more common year-round.

“Climate change increases the odds of worsening drought in many parts of the United States and the world,” explains the Center For Climate And Energy Solutions on its website. “Regions such as the U.S. Southwest, where droughts are expected to get more frequent, intense, and longer lasting, are at particular risk.”

Why Aren’t Heavy Rains Welcome After a Drought?

Scientists also see evidence that climate change will continue to bring more intense rain storms. That might initially sound like a good thing, since rain helps restore ecosystems experiencing drought.

But during a drought, soil becomes dry, which after a while means it has a tough time absorbing rainwater. That means that when rains do come after a drought, they can lead to flash floods since the ground is incapable of accepting it. That was the case last summer in the U.S. Southwest, when heavy rainstorms from Arizona to Texas after a period of extreme heat and drought led to flooding.

How Does Drought Harm Public Health?

Hot temperatures threaten human health without hydration and cooling measures in place, like shade or air conditioning. In the short term, heat can cause heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heatstroke and hyperthermia and worsen chronic conditions like cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, according to the World Health Organization.

During a drought, the impact of heat on the human body can be amplified by the lack of water for drinking, sanitation and crop production. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also says that air quality can decline during a drought because of an increase in dust and particulate matter that exacerbate chronic and acute respiratory problems.

Around 55 million people suffer from drought conditions every year across the planet, while “as many as 700 million people are at-risk of being displaced as a result of drought by 2030,” the World Health Organization estimates. Certain groups, ranging from athletes and outdoor workers to the poor, pregnant and elderly, are more vulnerable to heat.

How Does Drought Impact Wildlife?

Similar to humans, wildlife see their health and comfort levels decline during a drought. Less water means less to drink, but also less food that needs water to grow. That increases competition among different types of animals and animals of the same species that prefer the same food, like insects or plants, but it also means that those creatures may need to travel closer to human communities and infrastructure — like highways — to find enough food to eat.

“With fewer berries and acorns available, bears will eat garbage, grease from barbecues, bird seed and sugar water from hummingbird feeders,” explains the National Environmental Education Foundation. “Raccoons may seek out garden vegetables and pet food.”

And since droughts wipe out vegetation, that reduces the amount of habitat and hiding places for young prey creatures, like deer, elk and birds, the foundation says.

Drought has forced countries like the African nation of Zimbabwe, where dozens of elephants died because of drought within two months back in 2019, to relocate thousands of wild animals to a nature preserve in a different part of the country. In southwest Australia, mass camel culling was authorized in 2020 because drought conditions drove the creatures to drink too much water and enter towns seeking more.

Back in the U.S., an overpopulation of wild horses in the West has exacerbated resource availability problems, leading to an increase in the number that officials have rounded up and sterilized.

How Does Drought Affect Energy Production?

Hydroelectric turbines aren’t as effective during droughts because lower water levels cause lower water pressure, making it harder for the turbines to operate, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System.

But while hydropower facilities may be the most obvious energy production method that would rely on water levels, other sources of electricity also suffer during droughts. Any power plant that uses steam to rotate a turbine will be less efficient during a drought, while hydraulic fracturing and biofuel production both rely on water supplies for their operations.

How Can I Help Mitigate the Impact of Droughts?

Droughts reduce the amount of available water that could be earmarked for communities’ critical needs, like sanitation. Before a drought occurs where you live, there are large and small measures you can take to reduce your water demand. 

Doing anything to generally reduce water demand will help your community before or during a declared drought, but don’t feel discouraged if you can’t immediately make significant changes to your lifestyle. Your overall water consumption is likely nowhere near the excessive amounts that celebrities have been known to use even during droughts.

And local and state governments have the ability to set policies that can impact water availability at a broader scale, like instituting maximum water use levels and water efficiency standards.

Xeriscaping

Xeriscaping is the practice of landscaping an area in a way that requires little or no irrigation, or watering. It’s often deployed in areas with little water because of the water-intensive nature of planting vegetation that requires more water than the local ecosystem can naturally provide. But even though the concept may conjure up images of succulents and desert plants, you can xeriscape even if you don’t live in a community vulnerable to drought and water shortages. The premise is more about water reduction than water elimination. Reach out to your state’s cooperative extension program for information about what local vegetation you can plant on your property to reduce your landscaping water needs. 

Rainwater Harvesting

Depending on how much water your family uses and the size of your property, rainwater harvesting could help you bridge the gap between rain storms. Rainwater harvesting — also known as rainwater or stormwater retention — is a category of equipment that captures and stores rainwater for future use before it pours into the local stormwater or sewage drains. It can range from intentional plantings, like green roofs or rain gardens, to storage systems like cisterns or rain barrels. 

Greywater Reuse

Similar to rainwater harvesting, reusing greywater involves capturing water that would otherwise head to your town’s storm drains. But while rainwater essentially goes from the clouds to a storage container, greywater is water that has been used in the home for showers, bathtubs, sinks and washing machines, immediately sent into the sewage system after light use. But while you might not want to reuse your children’s bathwater for your shower, that water is suitable for other uses around the home, like watering ornamental plants, car washing or toilet flushing.

Help Collect Data

Knowing when and where droughts occur — as well as how they impact an area — helps experts craft strategies. To that end, the National Drought Mitigation Center suggests joining the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network or other drought impact data collection efforts to help track current trends and different problems that surface as a result of dry conditions.

Follow Water Conservation Alerts and Mandatory Measures

Regardless of whether your area is technically experiencing a drought or not, the American Red Cross recommends you follow any water conservation measures — whether voluntary or mandatory — that your local government puts in place to help the wider community stretch the amount of available, potable water. They also provide a series of their own recommendations as to how you can conserve more water, like using gray water for your plants, plugging up any leaks or drips in your pipes or faucets and covering pools to reduce evaporation.

The post Drought 101: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on EcoWatch.

Voters in Maine overwhelmingly rejected scuttling the state’s for-profit utilities in favor of a public power company that would have been governed by a board of elected and appointed officials.

The referendum was the nation’s first effort to replace all privately owned utilities with a statewide nonprofit option. The proposed new company, Pine Tree Power, would have bought out the assets of Maine’s two investor-owned utilities, CMP and Versant, using revenue bonds, taking over the distribution of 97 percent of the state’s electricity.

“I came here excited to be working every day on this campaign because I am terrified for my future and I need a utility that is going to be working for me,” Lucy Hochschartner, deputy campaign manager and spokesperson for Our Power, the group behind the ballot initiative, told the Portland Press Herald. “That would have been Pine Tree Power. It is not and never has been and never will be CMP and Versant.”

The measure, called Question 3, prompted heated debate in the months leading up to the election. Central Maine Power and Versant Power, the state’s dominant utilities, poured more than $40 million into a campaign opposing the referendum, outspending Pine Tree Power advocates 34 to 1. Political groups funded by the utilities and their parent companies mailed flyers and aired ads on TV, radio, and social media, urging Mainers to reject the measure, which would have effectively put the two companies out of business. 

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Opponents argued that ditching the established players would introduce unwelcome political influence into the state’s energy system. They also said the cost of buying the utilities’ infrastructure — estimated at $8.25 billion to $13.5 billion — would lead to higher rates for customers and a decade or more of legal battles and bureaucratic delays. Our Power, the advocacy group formed to rally around the referendum, called such claims overblown, noting that they would have negotiated the lowest possible price and any challenges could have been resolved within three to four years.

The ballot measure was the culmination of years of Mainers’ frustration with CMP and Versant. Both have been accused of exorbitant rates, prolonged outages, and poor customer service. Over the years, state regulators have repeatedly fined CMP for improperly sending disconnection notices and misbilling hundreds of thousands of customers. 

Supporters of Pine Tree Power also accuse the utilities of lobbying to delay climate action. In recent years, clean energy advocates have railed against CMP for causing delays in connecting new solar projects to the grid. Our Power said a nonprofit, publicly owned utility would have better served Maine by representing residents’ interests while providing lower rates, improved reliability, and greater investment in expanding the grid to accommodate more renewables.

Question 3 supporters in Maine joined a growing movement of activists who argue that only a publicly owned and managed power grid can ensure a rapid transition to renewables while prioritizing the needs and interest of consumers. Public power advocates from San Diego to Rochester, New York, heralded the referendum as the biggest battle so far in the fight for public power and an inspiration for similar efforts in their own communities.

Hochschartner told Grist in October that even with a loss, the fight for public power in Maine is far from over. While the campaign doesn’t have any clear next steps mapped out, “What we do know is that our utilities have real problems, and we will continue to fight for the best path forward for the people of Maine,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Maine voters reject effort to create the first statewide public power company on Nov 8, 2023.