In an average year, the Great Lakes get about 40% ice cover. Now, after the warmest year on record and the first time the world has passed the 1.5°C target for a full year, the most recent Great Lakes ice cover analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service shows that average ice cover is currently at about 5.9%.
By February 12, the Great Lakes reached a record-low ice cover of just 2.69%, CBS News reported. Lake Erie and Lake Ontario have tied their records for lowest ice cover, with records dating back to 1973, while Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior are at historic lows.
The 5.9% average is lower than the usual 40% average ice coverage this time of year, ABC News reported. Further, some parts of the Great Lakes have experienced winters without any ice cover.
“In direct response to warming air temperatures, we are observing rapid ice loss and warming summer water temperatures,” Sapna Sharma, professor at York University in Toronto, told The Guardian. “If the planet continues to warm, 215,000 lakes may no longer freeze every winter and almost 5,700 lakes may permanently lose ice cover by the end of the century.”
Analyzing the Great Lakes ice cover is important, as ice melt can reveal global warming impacts that affect the lakes. On its Great Lakes Research Lab website, NOAA noted that the decreasing ice cover can affect hydropower generation, commercial shipping and fishing, in addition to the environmental impacts, such as plankton blooms.
While the amount of ice naturally varies each year, there has been a sharp decline in recent years compared to the amount of ice coverage in the 1970s when these records began.
“There is a trend: a 5% decline in average ice cover per decade, which may not sound huge but it is a substantial decrease,” James Kessler, a physical scientist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, told The Guardian. “Open [unfrozen] lakes bring more rain rather than snow, which has knock-on environmental, cultural and societal impacts.”
The Great Lakes hold 21% of the world’s freshwater supply, according to NOAA. Over 30 million people depend on the Great Lakes for drinking water, and the Great Lakes are linked to $3.1 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP). Both rising and falling water and ice levels can have detrimental impacts on the lakes, including flooding and erosion.
If you’re looking to go on an adventure in the great outdoors, the variety of landscapes in the Pacific Northwest — from temperate rainforest and brilliant geological formations to expansive sand dunes and stunning river-carved canyons — are awe-inspiring for even the seasoned traveler.
Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington State
Old temperate trees covered in green and brown mosses in the Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington. RomanKhomlyak / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Named for the Hoh River that runs from Mount Olympus to the Pacific Coast, the Hoh Rainforest is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the United States. This magical ecosystem is one of the wettest places in the country, with an annual average rainfall of 140 inches per year. All that rain creates a dense canopy of deciduous and coniferous trees, and the forest floor is blanketed with ferns, fungi and mosses.
A gigantic rainforest once stretched from southeastern Alaska all the way to central California along the Pacific Coast — the Hoh Rainforest is what remains of that ancient forest.
Located around an hour drive from the city of Forks, Washington, and a two-hour drive or so from Port Angeles, the Hoh Rainforest is in the western portion of Olympic National Park. To get there take Highway 101 to Upper Hoh Road.
The old-growth forest has a year-round campground with 72 sites along the Hoh River. Reservations can be made six months in advance at recreation.gov.
Stop in at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center — closed from January through early March — for tips on making the most of your visit.
From the visitor center there are two loop trails: the 0.8-mile Hall of Mosses Trail — which features old-growth forest, including a maple tree grove and club moss springing from the forest floor — and the 1.2-mile Spruce Nature Trail, which leads you along the Hoh River and Taft Creek through new- and old-growth forest.
The main hiking trail in the Hoh Rainforest is the out-and-back Hoh River Trail. You can take this trail as far as you feel comfortable, up to its endpoint 18.5 miles in. Along the way the trail takes you past multiple campsites, the farthest of which is Glacier Meadows at 17.3 miles in. The trail ends with a view of Mt. Olympus at Blue Glacier moraine.
“I love the Hoh Rainforest! The Hoh River trail parallels the Hoh River and is relatively easy. At the end of August, the river is low enough that you can wade across it near Tom Creek,” adventurer Sarah Strock told EcoWatch.
The Hoh Rainforest. Sarah Strock
Just past the ranger station on the Hoh River Trail is the Hoh Lake Trail, which goes up to Bogachiel Peak between the Sol Duc Valley and the rainforest. Turn-around day hikes in this area include Mineral Creek Falls 2.7 miles in; First River access 0.9 miles in; Cedar Grove four miles in; and Five-Mile Island, which is five miles one way.
More information on hiking and permits for the Hoh River Trail and Olympic National Park can be found on the Wilderness Backpacking Reservations page. Pets are not permitted on Hoh Rainforest trails.
With the Hoh’s plentiful rainfall comes a rich ecosystem of flora and fauna. Average summer temperatures stay in the pleasant mid-70 degrees Fahrenheit, and the dense forest canopy and thick undergrowth provide ample shade for the rainforest’s many species.
Mammals like black bears, Roosevelt elk and river otters are common. Mountain lions and bobcats can be harder to spot, but at night you may hear or feel them roaming about their mystical home. Making their way along the forest floor are snails, banana slugs, salamanders, snakes and rodents. Songs, screeches and hoots from barred owls, American robins and Canada grey jay can frequently be heard, along with sightings of these majestic creatures. The endangered northern spotted owl also graces the old-growth trees of the forest.
Among the mammoth trees you will spot in the Hoh Rainforest are red cedar, sitka spruce, douglas fir and big leaf maple. As you explore the rainforest, you will see many fallen trees. When one of these giants topples, it allows sunlight onto the floor of the forest and provides nutrients for many new plants, animals and fungi.
There is truly no place like the ancient, hushed wonderland of the Hoh Rainforest — living evidence of the height of our planet’s balance and beauty.
Painted Hills, Central Oregon
Painted Hills at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon. JamesBrey / iStock / Getty Images Plus
The red and gold Painted Hills of Central Oregon sit like colorful camel humps in the foreground of the Cascade Mountain Range. The soft, rolling hills were formed 32 to 35 million years ago by sedimented clay and cooled and oxidized ash from the nearby mountains.
“If you drive north past the Painted Hills, the road will become thin and rutted. It passes through the John Day river canyon, with views normally available only to the ranchers and farmers who line its banks. It comes out on the crest of the Ochoco Mountains near Antelope, in a location where you can watch the sun set behind the Cascades – spanning from Rainier to South Sister,” lifelong Oregon resident Zach Spier told EcoWatch.
The climate east and west of the Cascades is vastly different. The western part of Oregon is temperate and rainy, while in the east lies the dry and cooler high desert.
To the east of the mountains is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The monument is made up of three units — including the Painted Hills — each from one to two hours apart by car. The formation of the varying strata of the fossil beds began approximately 100 million years ago; it continues to this day.
Located about 10 miles from the town of Mitchell, the Painted Hills are located within the John Day River Basin. The ash that gives the hills some of their layers blew east from the mountains, and combined with shale and clay deposits to give the hills their colorful stripes.
“The reddish and yellowish layers consist of laterites, soils rich in iron and aluminum that were created in tropical climates with a distinct wet and dry season. Red soils come from a more tropical period, while the yellows are from a drier and cooler time. Dark black dots and streaks in the hills are stains from manganese nodules, likely the work of plants that fixed the mineral or from salts that became concentrated as pools of water rich in the mineral dried up,” the Geology In website explains.
There are five hiking trails in the Painted Hills unit, each with its own parking area along Bear Creek Road. They include the 0.5-mile Painted Hills Overlook Trail, the 1.6-mile Carroll Rim Trail, the 0.25-mile Painted Cove Trail, the 0.25-mile Red Scar Knoll Trail and the 0.25-mile Leaf Hill Trail.
Learn more about the region’s geological history at the Thomas Condon Visitor Center, located in the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The visitor center has a paleontology lab, fossil gallery and displays with information on the more than 40-million-year-old fossil record of the area. The center also offers a short film, Layers of Life: Stories of Ancient Oregon.
Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area
The Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Matthew H Irvin / iStock / Getty Images Plus
While exploring the Pacific Northwest, the rugged and dynamic Oregon Coast is a place you won’t want to miss! Among its wonders is the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area — one of the most extensive temperate coastal sand dunes on Earth. Looking out upon the expanse of undulating golden sand, you might feel as though you’ve traveled to the Sahara Desert.
Part of the Siuslaw National Forest, the 31,500-acre Oregon Dunes were designated as a National Recreation Area in 1972. The sand in the dunes comes from sedimentary rock, uplifted and blown over from the Oregon Coast Mountain Range 12 million years ago. The rock moved downstream in rivers, eroding into sand. The shoreline as it stands now stabilized 6,000 years ago, but wind and water shape the dunes into various formations that change throughout the year.
The unique ecosystem of ocean, forest and dunes is home to many animal and plant species, including the western snowy plover — tiny shore birds who lay their eggs on the open sand; black-tailed deer — a subspecies of mule deer who sometimes graze on foredune grasses near the beach; bald eagles, raptors and golden eagles, who can be seen soaring above the dunes in the warm summer months; bobcats who roam the dunes at night, hunting birds and small mammals living in small stands of trees; the rare Humboldt marten, who usually lives in old-growth forests along the coast, but ecosystem changes have caused to take up residence in sand dune forests; sand verbena — a sweet-smelling succulent with bright yellow and pink flowers; tiny coastal strawberries that ripen into a rare and delicious treat in late June; and European beachgrass — an invasive species introduced in the early 1900s to keep the dunes from overtaking railroads, roads and ports, but which now covers more than half the landscape and threatens all of it.
There are several trails to guide you through the varied landscapes of the Oregon Dunes. One of them is the Tahkenitch Dunes Trail near Gardiner, Oregon. This six-mile loop takes about two-and-a-half hours, offers opportunities for birdwatching and does not allow dogs.
“The Tahkenitch Dunes trail is a quiet respite, taking hikers in a loop through multiple ecosystems, including areas in the process of becoming forested,” Spier told EcoWatch.
A shorter hike that you can take with your canine best pal is the 1.4-mile Tahkenitch Creek Trail, which is also a loop that takes about half an hour to complete.
Another possibility is the Oregon Dunes Loop Trail — a four-mile, moderately challenging hike near Westlake, Oregon. It takes about an hour and 17 minutes and does not allow dogs.
If you’re looking to gain some elevation and see a body of water other than the magnificent Pacific Ocean, the Threemile Lake Trail might be for you. This out-and-back hike is a total of 6.1 miles and takes you 997 feet above sea level to Threemile Lake. Starting out near Gardiner, the moderately challenging route takes about two hours and 47 minutes and is best tackled from March through October.
The distinctive colors, textures, animals and plants of the wind-blown Oregon Sand Dunes pretty much guarantee that whatever you choose to do while visiting this one-of-a-kind landscape, your experience will be unforgettable.
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, Border of Washington and Oregon
Sunset at Columbia River Gorge. 4nadia / iStock / Getty Images Plus
A trip to the Pacific Northwest would not be complete without a visit to the Columbia River Gorge. The gorge is an 80-mile-long, meandering spectacle of ridges, overlooks, cliffs and waterfalls. At 1,243 miles long, the Columbia River is the biggest river in the Pacific Northwest and forms the border of Oregon and Washington.
“I have ridden my motorcycle many times through the Columbia River Gorge area on both sides of the river, Highway 84 in Oregon or 14 in Washington, and both offer spectacular views going both directions of the marvelous geology and wondrous architecture of Mother Nature,” Harley rider and nature enthusiast Patrick Roat told EcoWatch.
The country’s largest national scenic area was formed approximately 18,000 years ago when an ice dam broke and Lake Missoula flooded the region on its way to the sea, forming gorges in its path.
Long before pioneers settled the gorge, the Klickitat Tribe thrived on the river’s plentiful salmon from both the Klickitat and Columbia Rivers.
The Columbia Gorge boasts the most waterfalls in the U.S., including the famous Multnomah Falls, Oregon’s tallest waterfall at 620 feet.
Hiking and camping are both popular pastimes here, as are picking your own fresh fruit at local orchards, enjoying fresh produce from nearby farms and visiting regional wineries.
Hundreds of wildlife species grace the Columbia Basin Watershed, including beavers, bobcats, black bears, the Pacific tree frog, yellow-bellied marmots, chipmunks, the western tanager, the greater roadrunner, the California ground squirrel, steelhead, walleye and small and largemouth bass.
One of the many trails you can follow through this glorious landscape is the 2.3-mile Oneonta Gorge Trail that leads you through a canyon past waterfalls and scenic views. The best time to hike this trail may be in late summer, as the canyon is at risk for flash floods in the spring. Also, stay clear of log jams.
Other hikes include the 13.1-mile out and back Eagle Creek Trail — 25.8 total miles — to Wahtum Lake; the six-mile Munra Point Trail with an elevation gain of 2,300 feet and spectacular views; and the 12-mile Tunnel Falls hike that will take you past multiple waterfalls.
Head to the Bridge of the Gods trailhead to join the Pacific Crest Trail, Section G of which leads to Timberline Lodge.
Another fun option is the Hood River Fruit Loop, a 35-mile drive through the Hood River Valley, where you will be greeted by fruit stands, u-pick farms and wineries. Depending on the season, you may find cherries, berries, lavender, apricots, flowers, pumpkins or wine and beer tastings.
“I absolutely love it in the summertime, it’s like a mini Grand Canyon in places, and it feels sort of hidden because it’s not on major highways per se like I-90 or I-5,” Roat said.
For those who love to be out on the water, the gorge provides opportunities for boating, canoeing, windsurfing and swimming, as well as kayak tours.
The Columbia River Gorge has something for everyone — each season offers new ways to appreciate this testament to the untamed splendor of the Pacific Northwest.
“The canyons, spires, cliffs, and river basin all afford breathtaking views and leave you with a sense of reverence about the area that will draw you back for more,” Roat added.
When Cleophus Sharp was four years old, his parents rushed him to the hospital in Houston because he couldn’t catch his breath, no matter how much he tried. Sharp, who grew up in the historically Black neighborhood of Pleasantville in Houston, Texas, says he almost died because the air in his community was toxic. Sharp spent two weeks in an oxygen tent before returning home.
Through his organizing work, Sharp later learned air pollution in his neighborhood likely led to him developing asthma. Pleasantville is bisected by several large freeways, and near an international shipping nexus adjacent with frequent truck traffic. “Those industries that were polluting [were] only three miles from us,” Sharp said.
Cordoned off by two major highways, saddled with industrial chemical manufacturing plants and recycling centers, and situated next to two major trade terminals, Pleasantville ranks in the 99th percentile for national climate vulnerability, according to the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index, a tool developed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund in partnership with Texas A&M University and a range of community groups like Achieving Community Tasks Successfully, the nonprofit where Sharp serves as a board member. The Climate Vulnerability Index is a first-of-its kind mapping tool that allows users to explore social, environmental, economic, and health conditions of every census tract in the U.S.
Sharp’s health concerns are shared by many. For decades, residents of Pleasantville have been forced to contend with polluted air and soil, disinvestment in public programs and services, and a lack of empirical data to demonstrate what residents know to be true: Pleasantville’s environmental conditions were making far too many of them sick.
“Part of the issue is a nonprofit organization has never had access to these types of resources before to prove that point,” Sharp said. “We only can tell you, ‘so many people died from this, and so many people have this issue.’” He says the mapping index will make a “huge difference” for communities like Pleasantville across the country, helping them point to the source of pollutants and help demonstrate to zoning boards and permitting bodies why additional pollution should not be approved in already-overburdened places.
Grace Tee Lewis, a senior health scientist at Environmental Defense Fund who championed the idea of the mapping tool, said that the index may help community advocates like Sharp illustrate for elected officials and public agencies the connections between innate threats, like weather, and vulnerabilities through social and economic policies over time.
“I think that some of these intersections — where climate, environment, and existing inequities have been systematically disenfranchising communities — really have to be at the forefront of the policies that we prioritize to try to break the cycle of disadvantage,” Tee Lewis said.
The inspiration for the index came from other tools that compile environmental and climate data by neighborhood, like the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool or CalEnviroScreen, California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool, Tee Lewis says. But few tools take as comprehensive an approach as the new index, which accounts for elements of public funding and policy that impact both how much a community might be impacted by a disaster — and how difficult it will be for them to recover. For instance, no other tool incorporates environmental data with data of the legacies of racist policies, like the intentional segregation of redlining. Without this kind of data, Tee Lewis worried that people were missing out on funding or interventions that actually matched their needs. Because one of the project’s central goals was to support the work of community organizations, Tee Lewis and her team thought it imperative that they partner with under-resourced places to learn which environmental or social factors should be included.
Tee Lewis reached out to community leaders like Sharp, who sits on the board of a Pleasantville-based community empowerment organization called Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS). Feedback from ACTS and other grassroots organizations helped Tee Lewis and the other researchers understand that it was critical to include not only existing sources of pollution, but also what daily factors might be contributing to environmental vulnerability, Tee Lewis said. For instance, the index tracks the percentage of people living with chronic diseases, who can be particularly susceptible to climate and pollution impacts.
These conversations broadened what the index would later define as ‘vulnerability’ to include metrics of public transit availability and access, the percentage of children taking medication to treat cognitive behavioral differences, rates of homelessness, or even the number of religious and civic organizations within a community.
After including these factors into their scoring methodology, researchers found that communities with the highest scores are those with “long-standing environmental justice concerns and health disparities, [and] communities that have had a history of inequity,” Tee Lewis said.
By toggling or layering different vulnerability factors on the map, like chronic disease and housing vulnerability, users may be able to tell a story through the data that can help illustrate how this historic harm has systemic present-day impacts. For instance, redlining, the practice of discriminatory mortgage lending policies enacted throughout the mid-20th century, is closely related to the climate impacts communities face today, Tee Lewis says.
Sharp’s childhood home in Pleasantville, for example, was one of the only neighborhoods where Black Houstonians were able to purchase homes in the 1940s with cement foundations. His family moved there in part because they could live safely. “They were able to live a comfortable life, and the people came together to build a close knit neighborhood [where] people looked out for each other,” Sharp said.
A Pleasantville sign placed in front of a dredge spoil mound in the community. Annie Mulligan / EDF
But racist zoning and policy decisions threatened the burgeoning community. A “Welcome to Pleasantville” sign once stood atop the Ship Channel’s dredge refuse. In 1957, the area flooded, sending toxic sludge across 40 blocks and displacing the sign. Two major highways constructed in 1958 and 1974 added significant air pollution. In 1995, a chemical warehouse owned by Houston Distribution Inc. caught fire three times. Legislators recently decided to widen and deepen the Houston Ship Channel. Some local residents are fighting the decision, as it would require the Army Corps of Engineers to excavate potentially toxic bayou sediment that would then be placed in containment zones almost exclusively located in environmental justice communities, like Pleasantville. If this project were approved, the existing dredge pile would double in size.
For too long, it’s been hard for decision-makers to see information about how environmental injustice, racial discrimination, and climate change are interconnected, says risk analysis expert Weihsueh Chiu, a professor at Texas A&M University, who worked with Tee Lewis to develop the index.
The index can help draw attention to climate risks that might otherwise have gone under the radar, like English fluency, considering that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is notoriously underprepared to assist Spanish-speaking survivors of environmental disasters. “This tool allows you to kind of both zoom in and zoom out,” Chiu said. Some places, like Vermont, for instance, may initially seem to have fewer risks, but the tool may help draw attention to clusters of chronic disease amid an otherwise healthy — or at least perceived to be — state.
Chiu hopes this is just the first step, and in future the team plans to continue to add to the conditions that users can explore, such as proximity to warehouses. There isn’t a national inventory of warehouse locations, and Chiu has been relying on Google Earth images to locate warehouses in individual communities, such as Will County, Illinois, where warehouses have been springing up like mushrooms due to its location at the intersection of two large interstate highways used for shipping. In some cases, volunteers have driven out to some of these sites to confirm that the warehouses indeed exist.
Going forward, the team will continue to add to and edit the tool as needed. But already, the index has the opportunity to close the gap between the lived experiences of community members and environmental policy enacted in the legislature. “That was the legwork that we were trying to do as a service to communities, especially disadvantaged communities,” Chiu said.
In a different way, Sharp hopes that the index will serve as a mirror for residents who are affected by pollution, so that they won’t get caught thinking that health issues are inevitable. “People have lupus, they have upper respiratory problems, and they just think people dying from cancer is normal. They don’t realize that the cancers are from some of the stuff in the air that they’ve been breathing for years.”
One of the world’s leading international nonprofit organizations, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. To do so, EDF links science, economics, law, and innovative private-sector partnerships. With more than 3 million members and offices in the United States, China, Mexico, Indonesia, and the European Union, EDF’s scientists, economists, attorneys and policy experts are working in 28 countries to turn solutions into action.
Grist’s editorial team has covered the Climate Vulnerability Index previously. This article is sponsored content from EDF and is not connected to Grist’s previous coverage. Sponsors play no role in Grist’s editorial coverage.
It took Washington state more than a decade to put a price on carbon pollution. The effort to make corporations pay for the greenhouse gases they produce started in 2009 with a string of failed bills in the legislature. Frustrated, climate advocates in Washington took the idea directly to voters, putting initiatives on the ballot in 2016 and again in 2018, but both ballot measures flopped — the first defeated by infighting among environmentalists, the second by a $30 million publicity campaign paid for by oil money.
So it was a surprise when the state legislature finally managed to pass a cap-and-trade program in 2021, requiring that Washington slash its carbon emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 levels as the baseline. Even more surprising, perhaps, was that the law was supported by BP, the same oil giant that had spent $13 million to kill one of the ballot initiatives three years earlier. Now the landmark law, the Climate Commitment Act, is under attack, threatened by a repeal effort bankrolled by a hedge-fund manager, and representatives for oil companies say they have nothing to do with it. In fact, oil giants want to keep it alive.
“We have never been against the Climate Commitment Act,” said Kevin Slagle, vice president of communications for the Western States Petroleum Association, a lobbying group that represents oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell.
In 2023, its first year in operation, the state’s program generated more than $2 billion for projects to clean up transportation, shift to clean energy, and help communities adapt to the effects of a changing climate. But this fall, voters will get a chance to shut it all down. A ballot initiative started by Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager exasperated with Washington state’s taxes and liberal politics, would kill the law and block the state from ever instituting a cap-and-trade program again.
The existing legislation requires companies to buy pollution “permits” at quarterly auctions, a way to encourage emissions reductions and generate money for climate solutions. Heywood argues that the program has helped give the state some of the highest gas prices in the country and says that Governor Jay Inslee and other officials weren’t upfront about its potential effects on consumers. Last month, the state certified that the measure had gathered enough signatures to head to the ballot this fall.
Heywood’s campaign, called “Let’s Go Washington,” raised $7 million last year to qualify a total of six initiatives for the ballot. The proposals would repeal the state’s capital gains tax and reverse policing restrictions, among other things. Some $6 million of that money came from Heywood, but other donors include the state Republican Party and the Washington Bankers Association. The closest it gets to oil money is a $25,000 contribution from Five Point Capital, a private investment firm in Houston with a focus on oil, natural gas, and water infrastructure. The newly formed “No on 2117” committee opposing Heywood’s initiative has raised $1 million so far this year from the co-founder of Tableau Software, Chris Stolte, plus a $1,500 contribution attributed to Trudi Inslee, the governor’s wife.
While the Western States Petroleum Association isn’t backing the repeal, that doesn’t mean oil companies are happy with the current program. Slagle describes it as broken because the auctions have yielded high prices for pollution permits. His lobbying group has been releasing advertisements that align with Heywood’s message, connecting the climate law to high gas prices. It’s hard to know exactly how much the program has driven up prices, but estimates range from about a quarter to 50 cents a gallon, depending on whom you ask.
Slagle doesn’t agree with Heywood’s approach, though: He wants to work with legislators to address these shortcomings, not throw the law out. “I think what’s missed is that this can be solved without an initiative, right?” Slagle said. “This is what we’re saying. We’re actually in the middle of this, saying, ‘Hey, let’s fix this program.’”
BP, which left the Western States Petroleum Association in 2020 over the trade group’s opposition to certain climate policies in Washington state, is also in favor of keeping the Climate Commitment Act alive. “We believe that the market-based, economy-wide carbon pricing program will work, and we oppose the initiative to overturn it,” a spokesperson said in an email to Grist.
The stakes of the repeal are high: Eliminating the cap-and-invest program would rip a $5 billion hole in the state’s transportation budget, taking away free public transit rides for young people, funding for bus routes, and more. The legislature would have to rework the budget, making tough calls on what bridges they want to replace and what roads they’ll have to close because they can’t be repaired, said Lennon Bronsema, vice president of campaigns at the Washington Conservation Action, a nonprofit that’s part of the No on 2117 committee.
People walk at Alki Beach Park in September 2020 as smoke from wildfires fills the air in Seattle. Lindsey Wasson / Getty Images
Voting down the law would also take away funding for improving air quality in the state’s most polluted communities. “Those people who want to repeal the Climate Commitment Act are going to try to foist down our throats, and our kids’ lungs, more pollution,” said Governor Inslee in comments to the press last month. “They want to destroy our protection for our kids’ breathing.” And it would add more carbon to the atmosphere as the state struggles with the effects of climate change: freak heat waves, unusually large and destructive forest fires, and declining snowpack on mountains, a key water source for the region.
The repeal could have repercussions at the national level, too. New York recently unveiled plans for a cap-and-invest program, and officials are monitoring the backlash in Washington state. “If this repeal initiative succeeds, it would be a blow to that momentum,” said Caroline Jones, a senior analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund. Last year, an Environmental Defense Fund analysis found that the United States can’t meet its international commitments under the Paris Agreement without follow-through from states on their goals. Washington is one of the few states on track to meet its carbon-cutting targets, thanks largely to the Climate Commitment Act, Jones said.
So how did the state end up with a law that Jones considers a “gold standard” for state climate policy — and also something that oil companies support?
For the oil industry, part of the appeal lies in the law’s exemptions. Since BP and other crude refiners fall under the category of “emissions-intensive, trade-exposed” industries, they get some pollution permits free, making it cheaper to comply with the law. When the cap-and-invest program was rolled out, about 50 percent of the credits were handed out to major polluters to use, said Caitlin Krenn, a climate and clean energy campaign manager at Washington Conservation Action.
Refineries get 100 percent of their allowances at no cost for the first four years of the program — after that, it’ll go down to 97 percent. That’s because of fears that these facilities would relocate elsewhere if Washington put strict regulations on them. But the fuel suppliers of gas and diesel, which might be owned by the same company that operates a refinery, don’t get any credits for free, Krenn said.
After the Climate Commitment Act passed in 2021, BP, which owns the state’s largest oil refinery near Bellingham, spent about $270 million on efficiency upgrades at its facility, estimated to reduce the refinery’s emissions by 7 percent. Cutting its emissions earlier than necessary gave BP the leeway to bank, trade, or sell its allowances. “The Climate Commitment Act rewards us for that. So, it’s not just a stick. It’s also a carrot,” Tom Wolf, a BP government relations manager for the West Coast, told the Seattle Times several months after Inslee signed the legislation into law. “We were doing this anyway … but there’s no doubt that it [the act] makes it even better.”
If the Climate Commitment Act gets shot down in November, it would also make it hard for companies to plan for the future. “If the program disappeared, then we’re kind of back at square one,” said Slagle, of the Western States Petroleum Association. “And so then, what might happen down the road?”
Businesses have long advocated for a market-based approach to climate policy instead of what they see as heavy-handed regulatory measures. That’s part of the reason the Climate Commitment Act ended up structured as it is, with prices set at auctions and polluters able to buy and sell permits.
“It is a solution that is market-based, right? That is what business needed to have some predictability around this,” Bronsema said. “The alternative is an incredibly heavy hammer from the government that might bring down emissions but isn’t going to help provide all the benefits that the Climate Commitment Act does.”
What the oil industry doesn’t like about the current program is the costs. At the first auction a year ago, the price of emitting a ton of carbon landed at $49, nearly double the average price in California’s cap-and-trade market at the time. Over the course of the year, the price rose to $63 a ton, triggering extra “emergency” auctions meant to ensure businesses can access enough allowances at reasonable prices.
Early polling shows that proponents of the repeal, Initiative 2117, have some convincing to do. In a poll released last October, 41 percent of Washingtonians would vote yes on the repeal versus 49 percent who would vote it down. That leaves almost 10 percent undecided, and historically, those voters in the state have tended to reject initiatives, according to analysis by Washington Conservation Action. Washington politics has changed since the late 1990s and mid-2000s, when voters approved initiatives to get rid of vehicle taxes and limit property taxes, sponsored by anti-tax advocate Tim Eyman.
“People really want to know, like, ‘This is a good idea to repeal this,’” Bronsema said. “And I think we have a strong case that it’s not a great idea.”
To get to the Super Bowl on time, Taylor Swift took a private jet from Tokyo to Los Angeles and then hustled to Las Vegas. The carbon removal company Spiritus estimated that her journey of roughly 5,500 miles produced about 40 tons of carbon dioxide — about what is generated by charging nearly 5 million cell phones. But don’t worry, the company assured her critics: It would take those emissions right back out of the sky.
“Spiritus wants to help Taylor and her Swifties ‘Breathe’ without any CO2 ‘Bad Blood,’” it said in a pun-laden pitch to reporters. “It’s a touchdown for everyone.”
The startup is among dozens, if not hundreds, of businesses trying to permanently remove climate-warming gases from the atmosphere. Its approach involves drawing carbon directly from the air and burying it, but others sink it in the ocean. Last week, Graphyte, a venture backed by Bill Gates, began compacting sawdust and other woody waste that are rich in carbon into bricks that it will bury deep underground.
Spiritus says “sponsoring carbon offsets is a step toward environmental responsibility, not an endorsement of luxury flights” and added that “celebrities are going to take private jets regardless of what Spiritus does.” Even before the company stepped in, Swift reportedly planned to purchase offsets that more than covered her travel. But some climate experts say moves like Spiritus’ illustrate the dangerous direction the rapidly growing carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, industry is headed.
“The worry is that carbon removal will be something we do so that business-as-usual can continue,” said Sara Nawaz, director of research at American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy. “We need a really big conversation reframe.”
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says carbon removal will be “required” to meet climate targets, and the United States Department of Energy has a goal of bringing the cost down to $100 per ton (a price point Spiritus claims it wants to deliver as well). What concerns Nawaz is the outsize role that private companies are currently playing.
“It’s very market-oriented: doing carbon removals for profit,” Nawaz said. That reliance on the market, she elaborated, won’t necessarily lead to the just, equitable, and scalable outcomes that she hopes CDR can achieve. “We need to take a step back.”
Nawaz co-wrote a report released today titled “Agenda for a Progressive Political Economy of Carbon Removal.” In it, she and her co-authors lay out a vision for carbon removal that shifts away from market-centric approaches to ones that are government-, community-, and worker-led.
“What they suggest is quite radical,” said Lauren Gifford, associate director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center at Colorado State University who was not involved in the research. She supports the direction the authors advocate, adding, “They actually give us a roadmap on how to get there, and that in itself is progressive.”
Nawaz compared carbon removal’s current trajectory to the bumpy path that carbon offsets has followed. That industry, in which organizations sell credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions, has been plagued by misleading claims and perverse incentives. It has also raised environmental justice concerns where offsets are disproportionately impacting frontline communities and developing nations. For example, Blue Carbon, a company backed by the United Arab Emirates, has been buying enormous swaths of land in Africa to fuel its offsets program.
“We don’t want to do that again with carbon removal,” she said.
Philanthropy is one possible alternative to corporate carbon removal. The report cites a nonprofit organization called Terraset that puts tax-deductible donations toward CDR projects (including Spiritus’). But, Nawaz says, that approach won’t grow quickly or sustainably enough to remove the many gigatons of emissions needed to meaningfully address climate change.
“That’s not a scalable approach,” she said. “We’re going to need so much more money.”
The report argues that communities and governments must play a central role in the industry. Nawaz cites community-driven carbon removal efforts out West, such as the 4 Corners Carbon Coalition, as examples of what might be possible on the local level. Nationally, she points to Germany’s transition away from coal as a way that governments can not only fund but fundamentally drive clean energy policy that puts workers at the fore.
To be sure, the United States is investing in carbon removal. The bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act included billions of dollars for technology such as regional direct air capture hubs. But the legislation mostly positions the government as a funder or purchaser of carbon removal initiatives rather than a practitioner.
“It’s, frankly, a pretty disappointing way it’s evolving,” said Nawaz, noting, for instance, that Occidental Petroleum is among those receiving federal funding for carbon removal. She would like to see the government take a more hands-on role. “Not just government procurement of carbon removal. But actually government-led research and early-stage implementation of carbon removal.”
Gifford agrees that there are dangers in the industry relying too much on the private sector. “There’s something really scary about putting the climate crisis in the hands of wealthy tech founders,” she said. But companies have also been at the forefront of advancing the field as well. “The climate crisis is one of these things that’s all-hands-on-deck.”
Those in the private sector say their efforts are critical to ensuring that carbon removal technology is developed and deployed as quickly as possible. “Our coalition represents innovators,” said Ben Rubin, the executive director of the Carbon Business Council, a nonprofit trade association representing more than 100 carbon management companies. ”There won’t necessarily be one silver bullet.”
“There’s a long history of public-private partnerships ushering in some of the world’s latest and greatest innovations,” added Dana Jacobs, the chief of staff for the Carbon Removal Alliance, which similarly represents startups in this space. “We think carbon removal won’t be any different.”
Nawaz and her colleagues want to shake that paradigm before it’s too deeply entrenched. The alternative could be continued unjust outcomes for marginalized people and limited progress on luxury emissions, such as Swift’s flight to the Super Bowl.
“The idea is that carbon removal is a public good,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to rely on just the private sector to provide it.”
One in 5 species of migratory birds, fish, reptiles, mammals, and insects tracked by the United Nations is threatened with extinction due to escalating environmental pressures and overexploitation by humans, according to a landmark report published Monday.
The U.N. report, “State of the World’s Migratory Species,” represents the first-ever comprehensive assessment of the conservation status and population trends of species whose members “cyclically and predictably cross one or more national jurisdictional boundaries.” Some familiar examples include green turtles, snowy owls, and Monarch butterflies.
The U.N. Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, or CMS, tracks more than 1,180 species that are already endangered or that would “significantly benefit” from being protected under an international agreement. The report finds that 44 percent of these species are experiencing population declines and 22 percent are threatened with extinction. Its release coincides with the beginning of a high-profile U.N. wildlife conservation conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where experts are calling for greater international collaboration to combat climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and excessive animal exploitation, such as hunting and fishing.
“Conservation of migratory species is extremely difficult because they cross nations, continents, even hemispheres,” Amanda Rodwald, director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told Grist. “That requires a lot of coordination among different countries … and thinking across geopolitical boundaries.”
The report reinforces previous research on the deteriorating health of wild animal species worldwide, almost entirely due to human activities like agriculture, hunting, and fishing, as well as the pressures of climate change. In 2019, a separate U.N. panel reported that an “unprecedented” 1 million species globally were threatened with extinction. A subsequent study from late last year doubled that number to 2 million by taking into account a greater number of insects, which make up the majority of species worldwide.
Migratory species are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. Their migratory journeys require large, intact tracts of land, water, or airspace — and these tracts are getting harder to come by, whether because of dams, boat traffic, roads, skyscrapers, or other development. According to the CMS report, 75 percent of listed migratory species are affected by lost, degraded, or fragmented habitats, which can prevent them from finding mating partners or food.
A previous report of the CMS, published during the U.N.’s annual climate conference in Dubai last December, highlighted how climate change is affecting the timing of some species’ migrations and making it harder for them to reproduce and survive. As climate change progresses, other studies suggest that fragmented landscapes will preclude species from moving to cooler areas where they are more likely to survive.
Amy Fraenkel, executive secretary of the CMS, addresses an audience in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Photo by IISD / ENB / Anvar Zokirov
The most pervasive threat to migratory species, however, is overexploitation, which the new report says is affecting three-quarters of the species it tracks. It says humans are intentionally — and often illegally — hunting too many wild birds and terrestrial mammals for their populations to be able to recover. They’re also unintentionally killing too many marine species as bycatch — fish, dolphins, and other non-targeted animals that get caught in the industrial fishing process. Since the 1970s, populations of migratory fish species have declined by 90 percent, and nearly every fish species the CMS tracks now faces a “high risk of extinction.”
The decline of migratory species also has severe implications for humans. As noted in the new report, migratory species provide critical “ecosystem services” that benefit humans by dispersing seeds and pollinating food crops that people eat, as well as supporting livelihoods for fishers and farmers and maintaining healthy ecosystems. “If environments aren’t healthy for other species, then they’re unlikely to be healthy for people,” Rodewald said.
Migratory species can also directly mitigate climate change. Large migratory animals — like humpback whales, for example — sequester carbon in their bodies and then transfer it into long-term storage in the soil or seabed after they die. Other migratory animals preserve carbon storage in grasslands by walking on and compacting the snow or soil, or producing nutrient-rich feces that keep plants healthy and prevent erosion.
To reverse migratory species’ decline, the CMS lists more than two dozen priority actions for policymakers. These include cracking down on illegal and unsustainable hunting, fishing, and bycatch; creating and protecting more natural habitats; and phasing out toxic pollution from sources like plastics, pesticides, and lead weights used in fishing. The report also recommends global coordination to limit light and noise pollution, which kill millions of birds and marine animals every year.
Crucially, many of the interventions recommended by the CMS would have co-benefits for the climate. Restoring mangrove ecosystems, for instance, could support migratory green turtles and dugongs while also pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it into biomass. And stopping destructive overfishing practices can protect fish while helping to preserve the ocean’s crucial role as a carbon sink.
The U.N.’s conservation conference in Uzbekistan began on Monday and is scheduled to end on Saturday. Delegates are expected to review more specific action plans for a number of particularly vulnerable migratory species, and to consider new species for inclusion under the CMS — the report says there are nearly 400 “threatened and near-threatened” species that could benefit from being listed. Nonbinding global guidelines for light pollution, under development since last year, are also expected to be presented for adoption.
The report was launched by the UN’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) at the opening of the CMS COP14 wildlife conservation conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
“Today’s report clearly shows us that unsustainable human activities are jeopardizing the future of migratory species – creatures who not only act as indicators of environmental change but play an integral role in maintaining the function and resilience of our planet’s complex ecosystems,” said Inger Andersen, UN Environment Programme executive director, in a press release. “The global community has an opportunity to translate this latest science of the pressures facing migratory species into concrete conservation action. Given the precarious situation of many of these animals, we cannot afford to delay, and must work together to make the recommendations a reality.”
The report also found that while some CMS-listed migratory species are improving, 44 percent are experiencing population declines. Almost all fish listed under CMS — 97 percent — are at risk of extinction.
According to the report, extinction risk is increasing for migratory species overall, not just those who are listed under CMS.
Key Biodiversity Areas are essential for the protection of threatened species, but 51 percent of those recognized as important for migratory animals listed under CMS are not protected.
Three quarters of CMS-listed species were found to be impacted by habitat degradation, loss and fragmentation — from activities like energy infrastructure, the expansion of transportation and agriculture — while seven of ten were affected by overexploitation, including overfishing, unsustainable hunting and capturing non-target animals, as seen in fisheries.
Pollution, invasive species and climate change were also pinpointed as having major impacts on migratory species.
Worldwide, there are 399 threatened or near threatened migratory species that are not listed under CMS at this time.
The report encouraged governments not to disturb migration paths and habitats when installing pipelines, dams, wind turbines and other infrastructure, reported Reuters.
“Migratory species rely on a variety of specific habitats at different times in their lifecycles. They regularly travel, sometimes thousands of miles, to reach these places. They face enormous challenges and threats along the way, as well at their destinations where they breed or feed. When species cross national borders, their survival depends on the efforts of all countries in which they are found. This landmark report will help underpin much-needed policy actions to ensure that migratory species continue to thrive around the world,” said CMS Executive Secretary Amy Fraenkel in the press release.
Migratory species are vital to the functioning of the planet’s ecosystems. They provide essential benefits, such as the transportation of key nutrients, pollination and carbon sequestration.
The report mostly focused on the 1,189 species listed under CMS that CMS Parties have recognized as being in need of international protection. It also includes analysis associated with more than 3,000 other migratory species not listed under CMS.
CMS-listed species are those who are in need of synchronized international action in order to improve their conservation status, or who are under extinction risk across much or all of their range.
Listing under CMS translates to a need for species to have international conservation cooperation. Addressing migratory species decline necessitates coordinated action between the private sector, governments and others.
Kelly Malsch, the report’s lead author and head of the Species Programme at UNEP-WCMC, said the nature of migration makes it difficult to protect these animals, as some travel thousands of miles across the borders of many countries, the BBC reported.
“Whether it is birds, or animals on land, or those swimming in our oceans, they are interacting with different country regulations which highlights the need for consistent approaches,” Malsch told the BBC.
Many of the threats migratory species face are worldwide drivers of environmental change that affect climate change and biodiversity loss.
In the last three decades, 70 migratory species listed under CMS have become more endangered, including the Egyptian vulture, the wild camel and the steppe eagle. At the same time, only 14 listed species have seen an improvement in their conservation status, including humpback whales, blue whales, the black-faced spoonbill and the white-tailed sea eagle.
Fish are suffering the most, with migratory sharks, sturgeons and rays seeing 90 percent population declines since the 1970s.
In addition to highlighting concerns, the report also provides recommendations for action, including expanding and strengthening efforts to deal with the unsustainable and illegal taking of migratory species and the incidental capture of species; increasing the identification, connection, protection and effective management of important migratory locations; addressing with urgency those species most in danger of extinction; increasing efforts to deal with noise, light, plastics and chemical pollution, as well as climate change; and considering the expansion of CMS-listed species to include more migratory species who are at risk and in need of international and national attention.
In order to improve the status of migratory species, the report also recommends mapping and protecting feeding, breeding and stopover locations.
“There is hope,” Andersen said, as reported by the BBC.
According to Fraenkel, CMS will be implementing a new technical assistance program for nations to more effectively protect habitats, Reuters reported.
Contributors to the report included the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Zoological Society of London and BirdLife International.
Environmentalists have encouraged governments to keep their promise under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to protect 30 percent of global land and sea for nature by 2030.
“If governments do everything they have committed to do, then the next (UN report) will have some good news,” said Susan Lieberman, Wildlife Conservation Society’s vice-president of international policy, who is attending CMS COP14, as reported by Reuters.
Ocean currents are Earth’s climate regulators, distributing solar radiation and preventing regional temperatures from being more extreme.
A new study has found that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) — an important climate-regulating system of ocean currents — is headed toward a tipping point, though scientists aren’t sure how soon it will occur.
“The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) effectively transports heat and salt through the global ocean and strongly modulates regional and global climate,” the study says. “From proxy records, it has been suggested that the AMOC is currently in its weakest state in over a millennium.”
The study by scientists from the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht in the Netherlands, “Physics-based early warning signal shows that AMOC is on tipping course,” was published in the journal Science Advances.
The researchers used computer modeling and historical data to develop an early warning index for the collapse of AMOC. They were alarmed by how fast the system of ocean currents is predicted to collapse once it reaches a tipping point.
“What surprised us was the rate at which tipping occurs,” said René van Westen, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in climate physics and physical oceanography at Utrecht University, as The Guardian reported. “It will be devastating.”
The scientists found that AMOC is on a swiftly shifting course that will have extreme effects on a large swath of the planet.
AMOC, the ocean’s conveyor belt — which includes a portion of the Gulf Stream — brings warmth and nutrients like carbon from tropical waters to the Arctic, where the water cools and sinks. The pattern distributes energy, helping to temper the effects of global heating caused by humans’ burning of fossil fuels.
The rapid melting of Arctic ice sheets and Greenland glaciers is causing an enormous amount of freshwater to rush into the ocean, which gets in the way of the sinking of the warmer salt water.
The collapse of AMOC would alter global weather, making the Southern Hemisphere even hotter, expanding ice in the Arctic southward and cooling northwestern Europe by nine to 27 degrees Fahrenheit, reported The Associated Press. It would also disrupt rainfall patterns worldwide. The effects could lead to widespread water and food shortages.
“We are moving closer (to the collapse), but we’re not sure how much closer,” van Westen said, as The Associated Press reported. “We are heading towards a tipping point.”
Van Westen said AMOC’s collapse will most likely not happen for a century, but the timing is “the million-dollar question, which we unfortunately can’t answer at the moment.”
Since 1950, AMOC has weakened by 15 percent, prior research has said, as reported by The Guardian.
The new study looked for alarm bells in the Atlantic Ocean’s salinity levels between Buenos Aires and Cape Town. Using computer modeling, the researchers simulated changes to the world’s climate across two millenia. The results showed a slow decline could result in AMOC’s rapid collapse in less than a century.
“It also depends on the rate of climate change we are inducing as humanity,” van Westen said, as The Associated Press reported.
The study added that, if AMOC collapses, Atlantic sea levels would rise by more than three feet in some areas, flooding coastal cities, reported The Guardian. The Amazon’s dry and wet seasons would become inverted, possibly pushing the rainforest past a tipping point as well.
The speed of the changes would be “so abrupt and severe that they would be near impossible to adapt to in some locations,” said Tim Lenton, a climate scientist from University of Exeter who did not participate in the research, as The Associated Press reported.
Van Westen highlighted the need for humans to act to curb the climate crisis.
“We are moving towards it. That is kind of scary. We need to take climate change much more seriously,” van Westen said, as reported by The Guardian.
News of plastic-eating enzymes and insects has been making headlines in recent years. Take, for example, fungi that digests plastic in coastal salt marshes, or the greater wax moth caterpillar that can live on polyethylene in its larval stage. However, to utilize these plastic-eating organisms, scientists would need to be able to breed them in large numbers.
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have come up with a potential solution to this problem by developing an artificial worm gut that can break down plastics without requiring extensive worm breeding. The scientists published their results in the journal Environment International.
A separate 2020 study found that Zophobas atratus worms have gut bacteria that can break down common plastics, but the scientists from NTU Singapore noted that this method of breaking down plastics isn’t viable for the scale of plastics, because the worms eat and break down the plastic slowly and require a lot of maintenance to breed them in high numbers.
“A single worm can only consume about a couple of milligrams of plastic in its lifetime, so imagine the number of worms that would be needed if we were to rely on them to process our plastic waste,” Cao Bin, an associate professor of the university’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said in a statement. “Our method eliminates this need by removing the worm from the equation. We focus on boosting the useful microbes in the worm gut and building an artificial ‘worm gut’ that can efficiently break down plastics.”
So the team from NTU Singapore found a way to recreate the plastic-digesting worm gut by developing microbial communities in flasks. The researchers set up three different groups of the worms and fed them diets consisting of different plastics: high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS). A control group of worms was fed oatmeal.
The worms were fed their specified diets for 30 days, after which the scientists extracted the gut microbiomes and isolated them in flasks with plastics and synthetic nutrients. By doing this, the scientists noted they created a sort of “artificial worm gut” that was left at room temperature and allowed to grow over a six-week time period.
The microbiome communities developed from worms that were fed a plastic diet had a higher amount of bacteria that could break down plastics after the six weeks, the study found.
“Our study represents the first reported successful attempt to develop plastic-associated bacterial communities from gut microbiomes of plastic-fed worms,” Liu Yinan, first author of the study and a research fellow at NTU, Singapore’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said in a statement. “Through exposing the gut microbiomes to specific conditions, we were able to boost the abundance of plastic-degrading bacteria present in our artificial ‘worm gut,’ suggesting that our method is stable and replicable at scale.”
The researchers plan to further study the microbial communities’ abilities to break down plastic. Eventually, they hope this information will help further develop more efficient and practical ways to break down plastic waste.
