This story was originally published by Capital B.

After a year-long legal battle with a railroad company over their land, landowners in a rural, majority-Black town in Georgia may be forced to sell their homes. 

In an initial decision on April 1, a Georgia Public Service Commission officer approved a proposed rail spur in Sparta. Several property owners had refused to sell the land to Sandersville Railroad Co. In March, the centuries-old, white-owned private railroad company sought to acquire the property through eminent domain — a process that allows the government to take private land for public use. However, property owners must receive fair compensation. 

The company petitioned the state’s public service commission to condemn the land parcels from 18 property owners along Shoals Road. The railroad company planned to construct a 4.5-mile rail spur that would connect the Hanson Quarry, a rock mine owned by Heidelberg Materials, to a main train line along a nearby highway. The proposed project would create 20 temporary construction jobs, a dozen permanent jobs averaging $90,000 a year in salary and benefits, and bring in over $1.5 million annually to Hancock County.

However, residents in the town of 2,000 told Capital B in September that they didn’t want to sell their land, or that they fear the potential damage to their homes from the train. Many others say they never received a notice from the railroad company and only found out about the project at a local community meeting last year.  

The Georgia Public Service Commission held a three-day hearing in late November. The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm, and residents argued the railroad project is an abuse of eminent domain that doesn’t serve the public or benefit the community. 

Benjamin Tarbutton III, Sandersville Railroad’s president, testified that economic development is important to him and “the American dream starts with a job.” He believes his railroad project will provide jobs, which is why he deems the project public use. 

Bill Maurer, an attorney with Institute for Justice who represents Sparta property owners, later asked Tarbutton: “Do you think part of the American dream is having property without it being taken for others’ use?”

“I’m going to stick with my first comment,” Tarbutton said.

During Sparta native Marvin Smith’s testimony, he also mentioned the American dream. Smith, a military veteran, owns property that was passed down to him from his father. His grandfather, James Blaine Smith, acquired 600 acres in 1926.

“The American dream says if you play by the rules and work hard, justice will prevail, and you will be rewarded,” he said. “It never occurred to me … over 43 years of playing by the rules … I would end up in a position where my land could be taken through eminent domain.”

Despite the residents’ plea, Thomas K. Bond, hearing officer for the public service commission, ruled in favor of the railroad company.

“I therefore find and conclude that the proposed condemnation by the Sandersville Railroad serves a legitimate public purpose and is necessary for proper accommodation of the business of the company,” Bond wrote. “The petition of Sandersville Railroad, as amended, is granted.”

The fight isn’t over, and the initial decision isn’t the final say in the case. Property owners, who are represented by the Institute for Justice, will challenge the ruling. They have 30 days to appeal.

There have been efforts to make it harder for companies to use eminent domain after the widely cited Kelo v. City of New London case. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government taking private property to facilitate a private development for economic benefits is considered to be a public use. Since then, at least 44 states have passed laws to alleviate the abuse.

“When the U.S. Supreme Court issued the unpopular and widely condemned Kelo decision, the Georgia General Assembly passed strict reforms to ensure that nothing like that would happen in this state. Today’s initial decision essentially undoes that work,” Maurer said in a statement. “We will fight to ensure that the people of the state of Georgia are protected from this kind of abuse at every stage we can.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rural Georgia community battles railroad trying to take their land on Apr 21, 2024.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On April 12, the Department of Interior released a new rule that will impose stricter financial requirements for oil and gas companies that operate on federal public land — the first such change since 1960.

The reform includes a jump in the amount of money that drilling companies must put forward to ensure cleanup of their wells. It also raises the royalty tax rate that operators pay on the minerals they extract on public land, which had not changed in more than a century.

In a statement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that the changes will “cut wasteful speculation, increase returns for the public, and protect taxpayers from being saddled with the costs of environmental cleanups.”

The final version of the rule, which was released in draft form last summer, joins a flurry of climate and conservation moves by the Biden administration in recent weeks, including a strengthened methane emissions standards for oil wells on federal land and a renewable energy policy meant to promote wind and solar development. Environmental groups praised the rule as long overdue.

“These new regulations are the kind of common-sense reforms the federal oil and gas leasing program has needed for decades,” said Athan Manuel, Sierra Club Lands Protection Program director, in a statement.

The increase to bonding requirements means that the government will have substantially more money set aside to pay for cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells. In order to drill, energy companies put forward funds, most often in the form of bonds purchased with a third-party surety company, to ensure that cleanup takes place.

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These bonds are held until the company plugs its wells. If the company performs the reclamation work itself, it gets its bonds back. If a company goes bankrupt or abandons its wells some other way, the government can use the money in the bonds to pay for plugging and environmental cleanup.

Bonding levels need to be high enough to incentivize cleanup over abandonment, and Interior Department’s bonds hadn’t changed in more than six decades. A 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office found that between 84 percent and 99 percent of bonds for public land wells do not cover the full cost of cleanup. The new rule raises the minimum bond for a single public land oil and gas lease — which often contains multiple wells — from $10,000 to $150,000. For companies that operate multiple leases in the same state, the bond increases from $25,000 to $500,000.

Despite these increases, the new bonding levels are unlikely to cover the complete cost of cleaning up the more than 90,000 unplugged wells overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. The same 2019 GAO report found a wide range of plugging costs for orphaned wells on public land, ranging from $20,000 to as much as $145,000 per well, with a median cost of $71,000 to plug the well and clean up the drilling site.

Insufficient bonding often leads to wells being left idled — not producing, but also unplugged. Studies show that idled wells are more likely to become orphaned, with the financial burden for cleanup falling on public regulators — and ultimately on taxpayers. The Interior Department estimates that there are 3.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S., which are substantial sources of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The new rule mandates that active operators on public land come into compliance with the new financial standards over the next three years and requires an update every 10 years to keep up with inflation.

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The new rule also increases the royalty tax rate that companies pay on profits from minerals extracted on public land, which will mean a windfall for Western states like Alaska, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The previous royalty rate of 12.5 percent was set in 1920. The new rate of 16.67 percent was mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which also raised the minimum bid for an oil and gas lease to $10/acre, up from $2/acre.

About half of this new revenue will go to the states where the drilling takes place, to fund public services. In oil and gas-producing states, it’s already a major source of income. In some years, New Mexico has taken in more than a billion dollars annually from BLM oil and gas operations, thanks to leasing sales in the Permian Basin. Still, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan fiscal think tank, estimates that the government lost more than $12 billion in revenue between 2010-2019 because royalty rates were too low.

The oil and gas industry was not pleased with the final version of the rule. In a statement, Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade group, said the changes will drive small operators off public land and suggested that the group may sue.

“This is another rule by the Biden administration meant to deliver on the president’s promise of no federal oil and natural gas,” she said in a statement, referencing a pledge by President Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign to ban drilling on public land. “Western Energy Alliance has no other choice but to litigate this rule.”

While most environmental advocates praised the rule, some criticized the administration for failing to live up to this same campaign promise – arguing that better financial return from oil and gas drilling is not the same as banning the practice.

“Reading this rule is like finding an old floppy disk,” said Gladys Delgadillo, a climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “It doesn’t belong in 2024. Updating oil and gas rules for federal lands without setting a timeline for phaseout is climate denial, pure and simple.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Drilling for oil on public land in the US is about to get more expensive on Apr 20, 2024.

If you’ve ever listened to “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors, you know that before any music from instruments begins, there is the sound of heavy rain and thunder, giving the song an ambience created by the “music” of nature. Likewise, about halfway through “Blackbird” by The Beatles, the sound of a male blackbird singing adds the inimitable chorus of the natural world to the melody.

As much as nature’s music has been sampled and added to songs over the history of modern music, its symphony of sounds have never been credited or given royalties.

Sounds Right is a new Museum for the United Nations – UN Live initiative that will allow artists who use sounds from the natural environment in their recordings to credit “NATURE” as a featured artist on streaming platforms like Spotify and give a portion of the royalties to conservation, a press release from the UN said.

“Sounds Right is a groundbreaking music movement. It unites people around the world in a shared commitment, recognizing the intrinsic value of nature. Together, we must act now to protect our planet for our common future,” said Melissa Fleming, UN under-secretary-general for global communications, in the press release.

With the goal of starting a global conversation about nature’s value, the platform will give millions of music listeners the chance to take action to help our planet.

An international mix of artists have already joined Sounds Right and released or mixed tracks that include Earth sounds to Spotify’s “Feat. NATURE” playlist, including Brian Eno, Ellie Goulding, AURORA, MØ, Anuv Jain and Bomba Estéreo.

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“From Colombia to India by way of Norway, Venezuela, Kenya, Denmark, UK, U.S. and Indonesia, there is a truly global selection of artists taking part and highlighting natural sounds from a vast range of ecosystems all over the world,” the press release said. “Brian Eno brings a visceral aspect to his David Bowie collaboration ‘Get Real’ with the harsh cries of hyenas, rooks and wild pigs.”

It has been projected that the Sounds Right project will engage more than 600 million individual listeners and generate over $40 million in the first four years.

“The initiative comes at a critical time. Wildlife populations have declined by an average 69% in the past 50 years and at least 1.2 million plant and animal species are estimated to be at threat of extinction. Sounds Right looks to flip our extractive relationship with the natural world on its head while recognising nature’s contribution to the creative industries,” the press release said.

Donations and royalties for Sounds Right will be collected by Brian Eno’s nonprofit EarthPercent in the United States and United Kingdom and directed toward restoration and biodiversity conservation projects in threatened ecosystems globally. An independent Expert Advisory Panel of mostly Global South conservationists — including Indigenous representatives, environmental activists, biologists and conservation funding experts — will guide distribution of the funds.

“Popular culture, like music, has the power to engage millions and millions of people, ignite positive global change at scale, and get us all on a more sustainable path. In a world where empathy is declining and many people often feel that their actions hardly matter, Sounds Right and UN Live meet people where they already are — on their screens and in their earbuds — with stories and formats they can relate to, and actions that matter to them,” Katja Iversen, Museum for the United Nations – UN Live CEO, said in the press release.

The Sounds Right project is a collaboration between the Museum for the United Nations – UN Live and partners including EarthPercent, Music Declares Emergency, Earthrise, The Listening Planet, Biophonica, Community Arts Network and Limbo Music.

Current EarthPercent targets include conservation efforts in Indian Ocean islands and Madagascar and the prevention of deep-sea mining.

“Hopefully it’ll be a river, or a torrent, or a flood of royalties — and then what we do is distribute that among groups of people who are working on projects to help us deal with the future,” Eno said, as BBC News reported.

“If you’re listening to a beautiful piece of music, you’re hearing the possibility of a good world that we could be in,” Eno added. “I feel that we’re in the middle of an enormous revolution. It shows in the very small things that people do. Their distaste for waste, for example. The feeling that irresponsible consumerism is actually not very pleasant… The people who run the fossil fuel companies, the people who pay advertising companies to tell lies about what is really happening [in the environment] are on their way out. I don’t think they have a platform in the future.”

The post Sounds Right Recognizes Nature as Musician, With Royalties Going to Environmental Causes appeared first on EcoWatch.

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency designated two types of “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law. The move will make it easier for the government to force the manufacturers of these chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or pfas, to shoulder the costs of cleaning them out of the environment. 

The EPA “will focus enforcement on parties who significantly contributed to the release of PFAS chemicals into the environment, including parties that have manufactured PFAS or used PFAS in the manufacturing process, federal facilities, and other industrial parties,” the agency explained in a press release. The designation, which will take effect in 60 days, comes on the heels of an EPA rule limiting the acceptable amount of the two main types of PFAS found in the United States, PFOS and PFOA, to just 4 parts per trillion.

Although the EPA’s new restrictions are groundbreaking, they only apply to a portion of the nation’s extensive PFAS contamination problem. That’s because drinking water isn’t the only way Americans are exposed to PFAS, and not all companies spreading PFAS into the environment deliberately added the chemicals to the products. In Texas, a group of farmers whose properties were contaminated with PFAS from fertilizer are claiming the manufacturer should have done more to warn buyers about the dangers of its products. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit illustrates how much more regulation will be needed to rid the environment — and Americans’ bodies — of forever chemicals.

PFAS have been around since the middle of the 20th century, when chemical giants DuPont and 3M started putting them in products such as nonstick cookware, firefighting foam, and tape. The chemicals, ultra-effective at repelling water, quickly became ubiquitous in products used by Americans every day: pizza boxes, takeout containers, popcorn bags, waterproof mascara, rain jackets.

But the stable molecular bonds that make the chemicals so effective in these applications also make them dangerous and long-lasting. The chemicals bind to blood and tissue, where they can build up over time and contribute to a range of health issues. The chemicals have been linked to testicular, kidney, and thyroid cancers; cardiovascular disease; and immune deficiencies. Over decades, as chemical companies led by 3M obscured the dangers of PFAS from federal regulators and the public, the chemicals leached into the environment and migrated into soil and drinking water supplies. They seeped into us, too; 97 percent of Americans have PFAS in their blood. 

PFAS are also in our excrement — which is a problem because of where that waste ends up. Biosolids, the concentrated byproducts of waste treatment plants, are commonly spread on farms as a fertilizer. The products are incredibly cheap — a selling point for farmers who are often working with razor-thin profit margins. Some 19 billion pounds of wastewater sludge was spread on farmland in 41 states between 2016 and 2022. The EPA estimates that 60 percent of biosolids in the U.S. are applied to agricultural lands. 

There’s growing evidence that biosolids are rife with forever chemicals that have traveled through people’s bodies. The EPA’s new PFAS rules don’t apply to biosolids, which means this contamination is largely still flying under the radar. The EPA said it aims to conduct a first-ever assessment of PFAS in biosolids later this year, which may result in new restrictions. Preliminary research has shown that the PFAS in waste sludge is absorbed by crops and, in turn, consumed by livestock; it’s even been found in chicken eggs. Some farmers aren’t waiting for the federal government to take action. 

In February, five farmers in Johnson County, Texas, sued Synagro, a biosolids management company based in Maryland, and its subsidiary in Texas. Synagro has contracts with more than 1,000 municipal wastewater plants in North America and handles millions of tons of waste every year. The company separates liquids and solids, and then treats the solids to remove some toxins and pathogens. But PFAS, thanks to their strong molecular bonds, can withstand conventional wastewater treatment. Synagro repurposes 80 percent of the waste it treats, some of which is marketed as Synagro Granulite Fertilizer. 

The lawsuit claims Synagro “falsely markets” its fertilizers as “safe and organic.” The plaintiffs accuse the company of selling fertilizer with high levels of PFAS and failing to warn farmers about the dangers of PFAS exposure. They say an individual on a neighboring property used Synagro Granulite, and the product then made its way onto their farms. 

Dana Ames, Johnson County’s environmental crimes investigator, opened an investigation after the plaintiffs made a complaint to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Johnson County constable’s office. Ames tested soil, surface water, and well water samples from the affected farms for PFAS. She found contamination ranging from 91 to 6,290 parts per trillion in soil and water samples from the plaintiffs’ properties. The county also tested tissue from two fish and two calves on those farms. The fish tested as high as 75,000 parts per trillion. The liver of one of the calves came back with an astounding 610,000 parts per trillion of PFOS — about 152,000 times higher than the EPA’s new PFAS drinking water limits.

The plaintiffs voluntarily stopped selling meat, fish, and other agricultural products after discovering the contamination. They’re suing Synagro to recoup their losses and more damages they say are sure to come. Synagro, the complaint reads, failed to conduct adequate environmental studies and the company “knew, or reasonably should have known, of the foreseeable risks and defects of its biosolids fertilizer.”

A spokesperson for Synagro told Grist the company denies the “unproven and novel” allegations. “EPA continues to support land application of biosolids as a valuable practice that recycles nutrients to farmland and has not suggested that any changes in biosolids management is required,” the spokesperson said, highlighting the lack of federal regulations. 

Ames, the investigator, said that federal and state inaction is the real root of the problem. “EPA has failed the American people and our regulatory agency here in the state of Texas has failed Texans by knowingly allowing this to continue and knowingly allowing farms to be contaminated and people, too,” Ames told Grist. 

In response to Grist’s request for comment, the EPA confirmed that recent federal PFAS restrictions do not affect the application of biosolids on farmland. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality declined to comment on the ongoing litigation in Texas.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental nonprofit that helped organize the PFAS testing on the plaintiffs’ properties in Texas, is considering filing its own lawsuit against the EPA for not implementing restrictions on PFAS in biosolids. “They have a mandatory duty to look at what pollutants are in these biosolids and set standards for them,” said the group’s science policy director, Kyla Bennett, who is a former EPA employee. “They have not followed through.”

The Texas plaintiffs aren’t the only farmers struggling with a PFAS contamination problem due to the use of biosolids. Maine already banned the use of biosolids as fertilizer in 2022 after dozens of farms tested positive for forever chemicals. A farmer in Michigan who used biosolids fertilizer was forced to shut down his 300-acre farm after state officials found PFAS on his property. It’s likely that any farmland in the U.S. that has seen the use of biosolids products has a PFAS problem. “No one is immune to this,” Bennett said. “If people don’t know that their farms are contaminated it’s because they haven’t looked.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA is cracking down on PFAS — but not in fertilizer on Apr 19, 2024.

The Biden administration has finalized a new rule to protect United States public lands, including offering leasing of the lands for conservation in a similar manner as it does for drilling, grazing and mining, reported Reuters.

The final Public Lands Rule will help the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to improve and protect the resilience and health of these lands from the impacts of climate change. At the same time, the regulations will help preserve intact landscapes and essential wildlife habitat, facilitate “responsible development” and recognize natural and cultural resources, a press release from BLM said.

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“As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts. Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in the press release.

The new rule builds on the administration’s Investing in America agenda, recognizing the intrinsic value of America’s public lands.

“America’s public lands are our national treasures,” said John Podesta, senior international climate policy advisor to the president. “[The rule] is a huge win for ensuring balance on our public lands, helping them withstand the challenges of climate change and environmental threats like invasive species, and making sure they continue to provide services to the American people for decades to come.”

It also compliments the America the Beautiful initiative — a decade-long effort to protect, restore and connect the country’s lands, waters and wildlife, led by local communities.

“Building on decades of land management experience and emphasizing the use of science and data, including Indigenous Knowledge, to guide balanced decision-making, the rule applies the existing fundamentals of land health across BLM programs, establishes restoration and mitigation leases, and clarifies practices to designate and protect Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs),” the press release said.

The rule will help ensure the BLM protects the health of public lands while managing outdoor recreation, clean energy development and other uses of these important areas.

“From the most rugged backcountry spots to popular close-to-home recreation areas, these reforms will help deliver cleaner water, healthier lands, abundant wildlife, and more recreation opportunities for all of us,” said Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, in the press release.

As the world faces increasing wildfires, longer droughts and more extreme temperatures, the rule will assist the BLM with tackling changing environmental conditions.

“Our public lands provide wildlife habitat and clean water, the energy that lights our homes, the wood we build with, and the places where we make family memories,” said Director of BLM Tracy Stone-Manning in the press release. “This rule honors our obligation to current and future generations to help ensure our public lands and waters remain healthy amid growing pressures and change.”

The announcement was good news for conservation groups, who have criticized the BLM for putting its focus on development for too long, instead of protecting land health, Reuters reported.

“This rule gives the BLM the tools it needs to right these wrongs and start improving the health of our public lands,” said Kate Groetzinger, spokesperson for the Center for Western Priorities, as reported by Reuters. “It also provides tools for extractive industries to be part of the solution, rather than exacerbate the problem.”

The post Biden’s Bureau of Land Management Will Offer Leasing of Public Lands for Conservation appeared first on EcoWatch.

Researchers have found a way to reuse metal waste as an electrocatalyst that can split water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen, which could be help make hydrogen production more sustainable.

Hydrogen is considered a clean, renewable energy source, but the process to produce it often comes with a major carbon footprint. According to a 2021 study, the greenhouse gas emissions from blue hydrogen (hydrogen that is produced and followed by carbon capture and storage) can be 20% greater than natural gas or coal when used for heat, and the World Energy Council reported that 96% of hydrogen relies on fossil fuels for production as of 2019.

Scientists are therefore exploring ways to produce green hydrogen, or hydrogen produced via clean, renewable energy sources and electrolysis.

To investigate more sustainable methods of producing hydrogen, scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Chemistry and Faculty of Engineering tested the process of electrolysis using swarf, a metal machining byproduct, including stainless steel, titanium and nickel alloys as the waste materials. 

They found that swarf has nanotextured surfaces with grooves that could help bond platinum or cobalt atoms. When bonded, they could lead to effective electrocatalysts which split water and produce hydrogen. The team shared their findings in the Journal of Material Chemistry A of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

“Industries in the UK alone generate millions of tons of metal waste annually,” Jesum Alves Fernandes, leader of the research team, said in a statement. “By using a scanning electron microscope, we were able to inspect the seemingly smooth surfaces of the stainless steel, titanium, or nickel alloy swarf. To our astonishment, we discovered that the surfaces had grooves and ridges that were only tens of nanometres wide. We realized that this nanotextured surface could present a unique opportunity for the fabrication of electrocatalysts.”

The team used magnetron sputtering, a method of physical vapor deposition, for 90 seconds to expose the swarf to platinum and cobalt atoms, which fit into the grooved surfaces of the swarf and reduced the amount of platinum or cobalt needed for splitting water. 

The result is an electrolysis method of producing green hydrogen using metal waste while minimizing the cost and environmental impact related to the use of precious metals. Green hydrogen production can also minimize greenhouse gas emissions typically associated with producing hydrogen.

“It is remarkable that we are able to produce hydrogen from water using only a tenth of the amount of platinum loading compared to state-of-the-art commercial catalysts,” Madasamy Thangamuthu, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, said in a statement. “By spreading just 28 micrograms of the precious metal over 1 cm² of the swarf, we were able to create a laboratory-scale electrolyser that operates with 100% efficiency and produces 0.5 litres of hydrogen gas per minute just from a single piece of swarf.”

The researchers have now partnered with AqSorption Ltd, an engineering firm based in Nottingham, to work toward scaling up the technology to produce green hydrogen.

The post Metal Waste Could Be Used as a Catalyst for More Sustainable Hydrogen Production, Researchers Say appeared first on EcoWatch.

More than 1,220 volunteers have cleaned up nearly 9.9 tons of marine litter from beaches in East Africa’s Seychelles islands, in what researchers called an impressive example of citizen science.

The cleanup took place on 52 beaches across 10 islands from June 2019 to July 2023, a press release from University of Plymouth said.

“This study, and the years of work that led to it, highlight the potential of citizen science and the positive impacts it can have. As an islander myself, I know how people living in the Seychelles rely on the ocean for every part of their lives. But because we are a collection of remote islands, there are challenges in managing waste and we also have to deal with large quantities of items coming from elsewhere,” said lead author of the study Alvania Lawen, a student in environmental management and sustainability at University of Plymouth, as well as Parley for the Oceans’ country manager for Seychelles, in the press release.

The study, “Beached plastic and other anthropogenic debris in the inner Seychelles islands: Results of a citizen science approach,” was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin.

The volunteers picked up trash ranging from rubber and foam to plastics and metals. Of those, 13,525.4 pounds were non-plastic items and 6,250.1 pounds were made of plastic like bottles, food packaging and weathered ocean debris.

“Initiatives such as the beach clean-ups give people the opportunity to be part of the solution, and to tell their own stories about how they are being impacted by environmental issues,” Lawen said in the press release.

Ocean currents bring waste to the islands’ beaches, where it becomes trapped by vegetation.

In some places, much of the trash was recorded as having been produced locally, but as much as 75 percent was determined to have originated elsewhere.

The Seychelles are made up of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. There are roughly 100,000 permanent residents, but the region’s coral reefs, beautiful beaches and nature reserves with rare animals like the giant Aldabra tortoise draw an influx of visitors each year.

The researchers said the study shows some of the obstacles island communities face with waste management, as well as how locals can help address the issue.

“As is often the case with environmental pollution, this is a clear example of waste generated in one place having significant impacts elsewhere. The quantity of litter collected during the beach cleans is astounding, and a testament to the efforts of citizen scientists living and working in the Seychelles,” said co-author of the study Dr. Andrew Turner, an associate professor of marine and environmental biogeochemistry at University of Plymouth, in the press release.

Turner emphasized the importance of the countries that generate the trash taking responsibility for it.

“However with climate change anticipated to increase the quantity and severity of storm surges, and plastic and other waste being generated in increasing quantities, items will continue to wash up on the beaches unless other, highly populated and industrialized Indian Ocean nations engage in more sustainable waste management,” Turner added.

The post Seychelles Beach Cleanup Shows Potential for Citizens to Tackle Marine Trash appeared first on EcoWatch.

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A new legal theory suggests that oil companies could be taken to court for every kind of homicide in the United States, short of first-degree murder.

The idea of “climate homicide” is getting attention in law schools and district attorney’s offices around the country. A paper published in Harvard Environmental Law Review last week argues that fossil fuel companies have been “killing members of the public at an accelerating rate.” It says that oil giants’ awareness that their pollution could have lethal consequences solidly fits within the definition of homicide, which, in its basic form, is causing death with a “culpable mental state.” In other words, the case can be made that oil companies knew what they were doing.

“It’s sparking a lot of conversation,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel at the advocacy group Public Citizen. After discussing the idea with elected officials and prosecutors, Regunberg said, many of them have moved from “‘Oh, that’s crazy’ to ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”

Starting around the 1970s, oil companies like Exxon understood the dangers that burning fossil fuels would unleash — unprecedented warming that would render parts of the globe “less habitable,” submerge coastal cities, and lead to extensive drought and mass famine. Yet instead of switching away from coal and oil, they doubled down, working to block legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spreading doubt about the science of climate change. Today, with atmospheric CO2 climbing to levels last seen 14 million years ago, the predicted consequences have begun to arrive. Since the start of the 21st century, climate change has killed roughly 4 million people, according to one conservative estimate.

By 2100, that same number of people could be killed by the effects of climate change every single year, according to the new paper by David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University. “[T]he scope of the lethality is so vast that, in the annals of crime, it may eventually dwarf all other homicide cases in the United States, combined,” they write.

Criminal law cases are normally brought against individuals, but Regunberg says there’s a strong case for applying it more broadly. “It’s supposed to be about protecting us from dangerous actors that would harm our communities. What if we actually use this system to protect us from dangerous corporate actors that are doing incomprehensible harm?”

Homicide opens up a new flank in the strategy to bring climate change into the courts. Climate litigation is now in its “third wave,” according to Anthony Moffa, a professor at the University of Maine School of Law. The first lawsuits sought to force power companies to limit their emissions by way of federal public nuisance claims, a strategy the Supreme Court shot down in 2011. Then people started suing the U.S. and state governments using the argument that they had a duty to protect their citizens from climate change. The approach bore fruit last year, when young climate activists won a suit against Montana that claimed the state’s failure to evaluate climate risks in approving fossil fuel projects violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment. 

That phase also includes a flood of climate lawsuits filed against oil companies in state courts using laws meant to protect people from deceptive advertising, and those cases are finally moving closer to trial after years of delays. Now the strategy has expanded to include racketeering lawsuits, which use the laws that took down the Mafia against Big Oil, and potentially criminal law cases including homicide or reckless endangerment.

Arkush and Braman’s paper suggests that all types of homicide are on the table except for first-degree murder, which requires premeditated intent. One option is “involuntary manslaughter,” or engaging in reckless conduct that causes death, even if it’s unintentional. “Negligent homicide” is similar, but for neglectful behavior. There’s also “depraved heart murder,” which requires engaging in conduct where you knew there was a substantial risk someone would be killed. Other variants include “felony murder” and “misdemeanor manslaughter.” Criminal law differs between states, so an attorney general or district attorney’s approach would depend on the jurisdiction.

Homicide suits could be a powerful force for holding oil companies accountable and forcing them to change their polluting ways. “Where tort law merely prices harmful conduct, criminal law prohibits it — and provides tools to stop it,” Arkush and Braman wrote in the Harvard Environmental Law Review paper. A successful lawsuit could result in courts requiring fossil fuel companies to restructure as “public benefit corporations” that have to balance profits with a commitment to the public good, replace their boards with new members, or make legally binding commitments to forgo certain practices. 

To promote the idea of “climate homicide,” Public Citizen has been organizing panel discussions in recent weeks at law schools including Yale, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the University of Chicago. Another panel will be held at Vermont Law School on Monday. Public Citizen is also looking into staging mock trials to see how jurors might react to these kinds of cases and what evidence they find compelling.

“There are a number of prosecutorial offices that seem interested in giving these legal theories serious consideration,” Regunberg said. “They understand that climate disasters — extreme heat, wildfires, floods, and more — are endangering their communities, and if there’s a way to stop criminally reckless conduct that’s contributing to these threats, they’re going to explore that possibility.”

The idea has been embraced by Sharon Eubanks, who led the United States’ racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies in 2005, in which the court found that companies had conspired to deceive the public by covering up the health dangers of smoking. “There were a lot of people who said we were crazy to charge big tobacco with racketeering and that we could never win,” Eubanks told The Guardian. “But you know what? We did win. I think we need that same kind of thinking to deal with the climate crisis.”

So why has no one seriously considered suing oil companies for homicide until now? Recent years have brought advances in the science that connects climate change to extreme weather events and quantifies how corporate emissions have fueled disasters like wildfires, paving the way for these types of cases. Still, the need to include attribution science adds a layer of complexity that hasn’t been present for similar litigation against tobacco or opioid companies, according to Moffa.

And then there’s the fact that prosecutors are reluctant to take corporations to court with criminal law charges. The first time that a corporation was charged under a criminal statute for manslaughter was in 1904, when a steamship owner was found guilty after its ship caught fire and 900 passengers drowned, but the legal strategy never really took off. “So then to say, ‘Why haven’t they ever done this in the environmental law?’ They haven’t really done it in almost any context,” Moffa said.

In their paper, Arkush and Braman argued that fossil fuel companies have been acting as if they were above the law. “Under a plain reading of the law in jurisdictions across the United States, they are committing mass homicide,” they conclude. “Prosecutors should act accordingly.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Taking Big Oil to court for ‘climate homicide’ isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds on Apr 19, 2024.