The International Maritime Organization, or IMO — the United Nations body in charge of regulating the global shipping industry — wrapped up two weeks of negotiations on Friday with an agreement that the industry should reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “around” 2050.

That’s an improvement over the IMO’s previous climate target for the sector — to merely halve emissions by midcentury — but it’s left many environmental advocates severely disappointed.

“There is no excuse for this wish-and-a-prayer agreement,” John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, said in a statement. Others called it a “historic failure” and a “wishy-washy compromise.”

Negotiators sealed the deal on Friday following 10 days of heated discussions meant to address the shipping industry’s outsize carbon footprint. Cargo ships, which carry goods and materials across oceans and are responsible for almost all international trade, account for about 3 percent of humanity’s overall carbon emissions — about as much as Germany. 

In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — the target countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement — experts have estimated that the shipping industry must cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030 before reaching near-zero emissions in 2040.

Those are the targets that a coalition of Pacific Island countries, plus a few allies including the United States and the U.K., were advocating for at the IMO summit. “Anything less than 36 percent by 2030 and 96 percent by 2040 will be detrimental” to reaching international climate goals, the Marshall Islands negotiator Albon Ishoda told journalists at the summit last week. 

Instead, the agreement set a decarbonization deadline for “by or around, i.e., close to 2050,” with the justification that this would provide greater flexibility for poorer developing countries. (Countries will be responsible for setting policies to achieve the emissions reductions.) The final agreement also included interim targets for 2030 and 2040, although they are far less ambitious than what scientists and many developing countries had been hoping for. The nonbinding agreement asks the shipping industry to reduce emissions by at least 20 percent by 2030 and 70 percent by 2040. It says the industry should continue “striving” for greater reductions of 30 percent and 80 percent.

“Nations failed to put the shipping industry on a credible, 1.5-degree C pathway,” said Madeline Rose, senior climate campaign director for the nonprofit Pacific Environment. She said the IMO’s agreed-upon strategy would exhaust the shipping industry’s carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees by 2032, although individual governments and shipping companies could take more aggressive action to prevent that from happening.

Several groups said the only reason there were any interim targets at all was because of a handful of negotiators from small island states, including Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands. These negotiators, whose countries are particularly sensitive to sea-level rise and other climate impacts, eked out stronger targets in the face of heavy opposition from oil-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia, which stand to gain from continued reliance on a fossil fuel-powered shipping sector. 

Larger developing countries like Brazil and Argentina also argued that any reduction in climate pollution would cause them disproportionate economic harm — despite evidence to the contrary. A widely cited report published late last month found that existing solutions — some as simple as reducing ships’ speeds — could reduce global shipping emissions by up to 47 percent below 2008 levels by 2030, with minimal impacts to global trade.

Other solutions in the report, published by the consulting firm CE Delft, include adopting wind-assisted propulsion technologies and replacing 5 to 10 percent of ships’ heavy fuel oil with zero-emissions alternatives like green hydrogen and green methanol.

Maggs said countries baselessly refuted the report and others like it as if they were in a “Trumpian, post-truth alternative reality.” He said the shared desire to come to some kind of agreement gave the obstructionist countries outsize negotiating power. Delegates were “prepared to put up with a weak agreement,” he said, so long as they produced something by the end of the summit.

In addition to the emissions targets, the IMO’s agreement reached on Friday also includes a “basket of measures” to help them reach the new goals. One is an international fuel standard for greenhouse gases, similar to what the IMO has already adopted for sulfur oxide pollution. The other is a global levy on shipping emissions that could generate revenue to fund the shipping industry’s transition away from heavy fuel oil. Both measures are set to be designed in greater detail over the coming years, with implementation scheduled for no later than 2027.

The levy in particular proved controversial, and many consider its inclusion in the agreement a major success. More than 70 developing and developed countries supported it, while Brazil, Argentina, and China, the world’s largest exporter, led a coalition to oppose it. In a diplomatic note delivered to developing countries last month, Beijing officials said the levy was “a disguised way by developed countries to improve their own market competitiveness.”

None of the IMO’s newly agreed-upon targets are mandatory, meaning the onus will now fall on member states for compliance and enforcement. Many environmental advocates are hopeful that national policies will nudge the shipping industry to decarbonize faster, although this will likely lead to a more confusing tangle of standards than if the IMO had unified countries around a single set of science-based targets. “It’s not ideal,” said Delaine McCullough, shipping emissions campaign manager for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. “But it needs to happen.”

In the U.S., for example, the recently introduced federal Clean Shipping Act would set emissions standards for shipping companies that dock at American ports, requiring them to align with a pathway toward net-zero by 2040. Other proposed laws like the International Maritime Pollution Accountability Act, which would place a pollution fee on large ships unloading cargo at U.S. ports, could serve as policy models on the international stage.

Individual cities and ports can implement similar regulations on their own, before federal policies are passed. Freight companies can take action too. The shipping giant Maersk, for example, is aiming for net-zero by 2040 and has committed not to buy new ships unless they can run on carbon-neutral fuel. It recently announced the world’s first effort to retrofit a fossil fuel-powered ship to run on green methanol.

“[T]he time to act is now,” Marie Cabbia Hubatova, global shipping director for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. “This is our last chance to get shipping close to Paris Agreement alignment and set the standard for other hard-to-abate sectors.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN sets ‘wishy-washy’ climate target for global shipping industry on Jul 7, 2023.

This story was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

As wildfire smoke from Canada plagued parts of the United States for the second time this summer, expanding into parts of the Midwest and East Coast, cities were caught unprepared. While a few put out alerts, outreach was limited. 

People walked through the smoke, often with little understanding of the health risks. Once the risks were clear, some people donned masks to prevent lung damage. But when the smoke — and the clear presence of danger — receded, they left the masks behind. 

That’s easy enough for people who have a place to call home. But for people who are homeless, either living in a shelter or on the sidewalk, they often have to navigate confusing rules and regulations to receive the type of help they need. 

Additionally, for unhoused people, dangerous air isn’t just a threat during an air quality crisis — it’s an everyday occurrence. People who are unsheltered are the most at risk, living under highway overpasses or closer to industrial areas, which means their exposure to air pollution is 24/7 and not just for a few days.

In Chicago, unhoused people living in a green space adjacent to a highway overpass were taken aback by the smoke from Canadian wildfires. One resident is worried about how the once-novel event might be the latest in a terrifying “new normal.”

“It was normal on the West Coast and now they have Canadian wildfires up here, now the Midwest is going to be, like, normalized with wildfire [smoke],” said Jared Wilson, 23. 

Wilson lives with asthma and has used an inhaler since he was a child. He describes Chicago’s air as being consistently polluted, even before the wildfire smoke rolled in. A recent Guardian analysis placed the city third overall for worst air quality in the U.S. mostly due to truck and car traffic on the city’s South and West sides. 

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For Joe Muro, 44, a recent transplant also living close to the highway overpass, wildfires are nothing new. He did not expect the smoke to follow from Colorado, where he lived through the destructive Marshall Fire in the winter of 2021. 

According to Muro, volunteers came by to offer masks and water to folks living in tents in the area. But he does not recall the good samaritans as being affiliated with a city agency or partner. 

Everything about the air quality crisis was exacerbated by climate change, from the fires themselves to the weather pattern that blew the smoke directly down the East Coast, according to Kristie Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington. 

Though the smoke has cleared again, the U.S. could see another repeat of it, as long as the fires continue to burn — and unhoused people will be the ones most affected, according to advocates. 

“With any natural disaster, we emphasize that people experiencing homelessness experience it first, they experience it worst, and they generally experience it longest,” said Katie League, a behavioral health manager at the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Particularly those who are living outside all the time, they don’t have dependable resources.”

Highway overpasses or places adjacent to industrial areas can be safe havens for people experiencing homelessness, since they might provide freedom from displacement or harassment from police or other residents.  

But those places expose vulnerable people to dangerous air pollutants, and they have few provisions to help them address health issues that might arise. A 2022 study from the Cleveland Clinic found that in Visalia, California, more than 60 percent of unhoused people surveyed often spent time adjacent to roadways –– where their exposure to particulate matter and other air pollutants was constant. Researchers noted that existing equipment probably could not capture the full extent of the pollution people are exposed to when they reside next to a roadway. 

One of the main pollutants found in both wildfire smoke and car pollution is called fine particulate matter. PM 2.5, another name for fine particulate matter, is smaller in size than most other types of air pollution, which means that it can bypass your body’s defense system. It can burrow deep into your lungs and even get into your bloodstream, causing all sorts of short- and long-term health issues like asthma, COPD, and heart disease along the way. 

“There is emerging evidence that the particulate matter that comes from wildfires could be more toxic than the particulate matter that comes from, for example, exhaust [pipes],” said Ebi. 

Air pollutants from wildfire smoke can be more dangerous than regular contaminants because wildfires can burn beyond forests into residential and commercial areas. When those wildfires burn, they can clear almost anything in their path, including plastics, synthetic fibers, steel components, and other materials. Those substances eventually end up in the smoke along with wood particles from forests, creating a particularly toxic combination.

As the climate crisis intensifies, unhoused people could be exposed to even more dangerous conditions with long-term effects. In a 2020 study from the University of Utah, researchers found that nearly 90 percent of people in Salt Lake County experiencing homelessness sought out medical attention for a condition associated with air pollution. 

If homeless people do have access to shelter, they are often dependent on a wide array of systems that may or may not be responsive to their needs. Shelters might only be open certain hours, or have certain requirements. Additionally, families might need to separate to be allowed into certain shelters — putting parents in a difficult situation. 

Other cities expanded hours for shelters and handed out masks to try to help people through the crisis. In Philadelphia, the city opened a shelter in an area where none had existed before. In Baltimore, the city expanded the time that people could be in shelters, as well as coordinated outreach to unhoused people through a program from the mayor’s office.

“It is a coordinated response. And so we identify who was at greatest risk, either based on their living situation, because they were unsafely housed, as well as individuals who the city employs that have to work outdoors,” said Dr. Leticia Dzirasa, deputy mayor for equity, health, and human services in Baltimore. 

But part of the issue is a lack of resources to initiate a response when events like these happen, according to Dzirasa.

While air quality in the United States has markedly improved since the 1980s, not everyone gets the benefit. Communities of color are often disproportionately exposed to poor air quality because of decades of racist zoning policies that disadvantaged non-white and immigrant neighborhoods, often forcing them to live closer to industry. 

In a similar vein, homeless people often find safety from the elements in the high traffic, centrally-located areas under highway overpasses, which also provide a steady stream of air pollutants. These two issues are often affecting the same group of people, since Black and Latino people are more likely to experience homelessness than their white counterparts. 

Planning is key, said Ebi, who noted that any early warning system needs to include everyone, including the unhoused. 

Longer-term hazards, like vehicular or industrial pollution, also pose an ongoing threat to people’s health. Although there are numerous solutions to limit exposures, including opening up cooling centers, expanding shelter access, and paying hotels to rent out space for people.

There’s only one that is truly effective for Sean Read, vice president of regional programs at Friendship Place, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit focused on providing services for homeless people. 

 “The answer is: We need more housing,” said Read.

This story has been updated to include Sean Read’s correct job title.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How air pollution and the housing crisis are connected on Jul 7, 2023.

Nearly half of the United States’ water supply is contaminated with “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances also known as PFAS. That’s according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey. 

Between 2016 and 2021, federal scientists tested tap water from public supply sites and private wells across the U.S., and in territories including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Those tests revealed PFAS contamination in almost 45 percent of the faucets tested. 

PFAS cause a wide variety of health impacts, such as developmental delays in children, bone irregularities, behavioral changes, and interference with the body’s ability to produce hormones. They can also cause an increased risk of cancers. Research has shown that certain PFAS have been found in the blood streams of humans and animals and can remain in the body for years. 

A synthetic chemical used to resist grease, oil, water, and heat, PFAS were first introduced in the 1940s and are used in a wide range of products including clothing items, carpeting, cleaning products, paints, fire-fighting foams, cookware, and food packaging and processing equipment. Their widespread use has caused a lasting presence in air, water and soil, and because PFAS take over 1,000 years to degrade, they have earned the nickname “forever chemicals.”

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The federal study found that urban areas are more at risk than rural areas for PFAS contamination, finding the substances in about 70 percent of urban areas compared to 8 percent of rural areas. It also found that PFAS may be more common in the Great Plains, Great Lakes, Eastern Seaboard, and Central and Southern California regions. 

Last month, chemical and manufacturing company 3M and a large coalition of U.S. cities and towns reached a $10.3 billion settlement over the company’s use of PFAS. The settlement occurred after thousands of plaintiffs sued 3M for allegedly contaminating municipal drinking water supplies with PFAS for decades, despite knowing as early as the 1970s that the chemicals were harmful to human and environmental health.

Federal regulators have proposed that companies report to consumers whether their products contain PFAS. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, estimates that compliance would cost the chemical and semiconductor industries about $1 billion annually, though the sectors generate about $500 billion per year. 

The EPA in March proposed the first federal drinking water limits on six forms of PFAS, but a final decision is not expected until later this year.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Here are the chances your water supply is contaminated by ‘forever chemicals’ on Jul 7, 2023.