An extended heat wave has descended upon the United States, causing extreme heat alerts and record temperatures for tens of millions. Cities like Chicago have already broken records as daytime temperatures reached into the 90s from the Midwest to Maine.

On Tuesday, Governor of New York Kathy Hochul called on the National Guard to help with emergencies that may arise due to the heat, which is expected to last through at least Friday, reported The Associated Press.

“This is a time of significant risk, and we’re doing our best to make sure that all lives are protected,” said Hochul during a briefing, as The Associated Press reported.

Monday saw a Chicago temperature record from 1957 smashed when the city reached 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot and humid conditions this week will bring heat indices close to 100 in the country’s third-largest city, according to a post by the National Weather Service Chicago on X.

The National Weather Service (NWS) warned of extreme temperatures in northern New England as well.

“In stark contrast to the cool, windy, rainy and even snowy weather in the West, a heat wave will settle and persist across the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and the Northeast through the next few days.  Forecast highs today and Wednesday will reach into the mid- to upper 90s, even the century mark

Wednesday and Thursday afternoon at the hottest locations in interior northern New England.  Widespread, numerous record-tying/breaking high temperatures are possible,” the NWS website said.

The sweltering conditions are partially the result of a “heat dome,” which traps air that gets hotter with each day of sunshine. Nighttime temperatures often stay too warm to offer much of a reprieve, and the combination is a recipe for increased risk of heat-related illness.

“Warm overnight temperatures only dropping into the mid-70s will offer little to no relief, especially to those without adequate or reliable cooling,” said the Weather Prediction Center, as CNN reported.

Chicago’s scorching temperatures didn’t keep visitors to Grant Park from wanting hot food on a hot day, reported CBS News.

“They be ordering the hottest stuff on the hottest day,” said Emmanuel Ramos, cooking in a food truck next to the park. “They order ramen, corn — they just want everything hot. I don’t know why. Right now, something that would be good is the smoothies. I think those are refreshing.”

In 2023, the U.S. had the most heat waves since 1936, The Associated Press reported. A heat wave is a period of unusually hot weather that lasts three days or more.

Officials in the Midwest and Northeast are encouraging people to limit their outdoor activities whenever possible and check on others, such as neighbors and family members, who could be especially vulnerable to the high temperatures. Cooling centers have been opened in some places.

“The early arrival of this magnitude of heat, the duration, abundant sunshine, and lack of relief overnight will increase the danger of this heatwave beyond what the exact temperature values would suggest. This is especially true for those without adequate air conditioning, which becomes more of a concern for locations further north that are not as accustomed to periods of persistent heat,” the Weather Prediction Center said.

The post Heat Wave Hits Midwest and Northeast With Scorching Record Temperatures appeared first on EcoWatch.

Every time you eat a blueberry, the microbiome in your gut gets to work. Bacterial enzymes attack the organic compounds of the fruit: a burbling, gurgling digestive process that can, often to our embarrassment, cause us to pass gas. That may not be such a big deal for a human, but new research shows that the microbial action in icy Arctic soils might not be so different. On a global scale, it could mean the planet belching up more dangerous greenhouse gases.

Permafrost, the frozen earth that covers roughly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, traps an enormous amount of planet-heating carbon — 2.5 times the amount currently in the atmosphere. But as the ground thaws, the microbial community in the soil wakes up and begins to eat away at the trapped organic material, releasing all that buried carbon into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases, which, in turn, trap even more heat around the planet. In a self-perpetuating feedback loop, the warmer it gets, the more active soil microbes become. And new research suggests that scientists might have not realized just how much of that carbon-sinking permafrost is at risk: Twice the estimated amount of carbon could be on offer for hungry microbes to decompose, which could lead to increased emissions. 

“We were surprised that some of the exact pathways that exist in the human gut were shared by totally different organisms,” said Kelly Wrighton, a microbiology professor at Colorado State University who leads the lab behind the study, which was published last month in the journal Nature Microbiology. While she said this could mean a lot more future permafrost emissions than climate models previously accounted for, more research is needed to determine exactly how much. 

There’s so much left to figure out, in fact, that many climate models fail to account for the thawing permafrost at all. Recent advancements in technology, like tracking methane with satellites, are helping us get a better idea of what’s already seeping out of the soil and how the thawing landscape is changing. But what about the teeny organic forces churning up all that carbon in the first place? 

While half of all of Earth’s carbon is stored in permafrost, not all of it is available for microbes to chow down and burp up as carbon dioxide and methane. Based on a decades-old theory, soil scientists used to think that polyphenols — a class of more than 8,000 organic compounds found abundantly in many plants — weren’t consumable by microbes in permafrost conditions, which would prevent some carbon from escaping when the ground thaws.

This assumption has even led some researchers to propose that limiting permafrost emissions could be possible by seeding the soil with polyphenol-rich matter. But polyphenols are also plentiful in berries, nuts, and many other types of food that humans eat, and according to human-health research, the microbes in our stomachs handle them just fine. 

Bridget McGivern, a microbiologist at Colorado State University and lead author of the study, says it was a contradiction between different scientific fields that left researchers puzzled. “How could these two things be true in these different ecosystems? We know that, most of the time, microorganisms follow the same rules across systems.”

Recent advancements have finally allowed scientists to begin peering into the complex, diverse world of soil genetics and answer these questions. McGivern and her colleagues started by creating an open-source gene-labeling tool, which can compare genetic sequences that microbes express when they munch on polyphenols in different environments, including human digestive systems. Then, the researchers used it to look closely at permafrost soil and found genetic evidence that microbes were decomposing the polyphenols there, too.

Before the study was published, McGivern says about 25 percent of all carbon trapped in the permafrost was thought to be available for microbes and factored into climate models. Now that polyphenols are on the microbial menu, that number has doubled — meaning twice as much carbon could be accessible for the microbes to decompose and convert into greenhouse gases. 

There are still many gaps to fill, and estimating the permafrost’s future emissions requires more research from different fields. “But what we can say is that there is this huge carbon pool that we were ignoring that we really should pay attention to,” McGivern said. 

Tyler Jones, a climate researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, agrees. “We’re a bit behind,” he said. Decades ago, researchers thought that permafrost may stay frozen and not pose an immediate climate threat. Fast forward to today, he said, and a rapidly changing Arctic has been found to be warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet, sparking a flood of urgent research. “There’s so many missing puzzle pieces right now. We can’t even see what the full puzzle looks like.” 

Other natural processes complicate the picture even further. In a process called shrubification, plant life is creeping farther north, colonizing the earth that receding ice reveals. Jones says all that extra plant life would suck up carbon, helping turn the Arctic back into a carbon sink. But research shows shrubs may trap snow before it can begin chilling the earth. McGivern points out it may also mean more polyphenol-laden soil for the microbes to break down.

“The impacts are unfolding already,” said Jan Nitzbon, a permafrost researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute. The ice is already reacting to each fractional degree of warming — thawing gradually in some areas and collapsing in bursts in others, threatening the ecosystem and people who live within it alike.

“Mitigating carbon emissions, keeping global warming temperatures as low as possible — that’s kind of the only viable way to protect as much permafrost as possible,” Nitzbon said

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What your gut has in common with Arctic permafrost, and why it’s a troubling sign for climate change on Jun 18, 2024.

After the Vermont state legislature overrode a veto from Governor Phil Scott, Vermont has now become the second state in the U.S. to ban neonicotinoids, or neonics, a type of pesticide that is particularly harmful to bees. The ban comes at the start of Pollinator Week.

The bill was vetoed by Governor Scott on May 20, 2024, but the Vermont House of Representatives and Senate voted to override the governor’s veto on June 17.

“This bill unfairly targets dairy farmers reliant on corn crops and will harm farmers without achieving its goals for pollinators,” Governor Scott said of the bill. “For these reasons I cannot sign it into law.”

Neonics are common in insecticides for agricultural and lawncare use, but they are neurotoxic. These chemicals are harmful and even deadly to bees and other pollinators. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), neonics, which were first developed in the 1990s, are now the most common insecticide class in the U.S.

A study published in 2019 found that since the rise in the use of neonics, agriculture had become 48 times more toxic to insects by 2014. The study further determined that neonics made up about 99% of total acute oral toxicity loading of insecticides in 2014.

As NRDC explained, neonics are meant for targeted pesticide use but are often used more broadly, including for corn crops. The organization reported that each conventional corn seed has enough neonics in its coating to kill around 250,000 bees, plus these chemicals can leach into soil and groundwater.

Now, Vermont is minimizing the use of neonics by requiring agronomists to provide written exemptions, or a type of prescription as described by NRDC, in order to plant crop seeds coated with neonics. The state follows New York in establishing restrictions on neonics. As reported by the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, four other states (Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii and Washington) have introduced legislation restricting neonics.

Vermont’s restrictions are similar to restrictions set in Québec, which were initially met with concerns over crop yields. However, the neonics restrictions in Canada brought the use of neonics for corn and soybean crops down to around 0.5%, leading to a decline in the amount of neonics contaminating waterways without any impact on crop yields, Times Union reported.

Following the overridden veto, the bill is slated to take effect beginning Jan. 1, 2029, VT Digger reported.

The post Vermont Becomes Second State to Ban Bee-Killing Neonic Pesticides appeared first on EcoWatch.

Pet ownership is one of those ethically dubious behaviors from a sustainability standpoint — the…

The post Cat Owner Conundrum: Can Litter Be Sustainable? appeared first on Earth911.

Smart plugs are affordable, easy-to-use devices that bring smart home features to your home electronics….

The post We Earthlings: Smart Plugs Help You Save Energy appeared first on Earth911.

Solar panels. Heat Pumps. Electric buses. Those are just three of the things the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, is hoping to acquire in their latest negotiations for a new contract, one that would address the rising toll of climate change in the more than 500 schools in which their members teach.  

Arguably one of the most powerful unions for teachers in the nation, the CTU held public negotiations last Friday in a crowded elementary school gymnasium, facing off against leaders from Chicago Public Schools, or CPS. 

The two entities have a contentious relationship, made clear in the last decade with two strikes and several showdowns during the pandemic. The negotiations were also streamed, but any observers expecting the usual verbal fireworks would be disappointed. Both sides agreed that climate change is a real challenge. Now, they just have to figure out how to pay for the changes necessary.  

“Chicago’s buildings, including school buildings, are a major source of carbon emissions,” said Lauren Bianchi, a social studies teacher on the city’s Southeast Side and chair of the CTU’s climate justice committee. “CPS buildings produce yearly emissions equivalent to about 900 railcars’ worth of coal.”

Nationwide, the Biden administration has encouraged school districts to begin thinking about cutting their climate emissions. To that end, the federal government has funneled millions of dollars in federal grants and technical assistance to help schools install solar panels, purchase electric buses, and update heating and cooling systems. But from California to Massachusetts, teachers unions have already started to get loud about climate justice demands.

As heat and extreme weather become more prevalent because of the climate crisis, J. Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said it makes sense that climate demands are turning up in union negotiations. 

“If you want a green school, you have to really think about what the challenges of the climate crisis will bring to students who are trying to study,” said Cha. “Things like heat and other things that will intensify from the climate crisis are then educational issues.” 

In April, Stacey Davis Gates, the union’s president, announced a “transformative” contract proposal in which increased wages were just a starting point. The plan included hundreds of items ranging from a plan to build more affordable housing citywide to providing additional resources for the thousands of migrant children shuttled to Chicago from the Mexican border. On top of that, the union wants energy efficiency and climate resiliency written into their new contract.

To start, the CTU wants to bring the school district’s aging infrastructure into the 21st century. Chicago’s school campuses are on average more than 80 years old, twice the national average according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. The oldest school still in operation dates back to 1874, the same year as the Great Chicago Fire. 

And keeping the lights on in the city’s old public schools isn’t cheap.  

“Chicago Public Schools will face more than a billion dollars in climate driven cooling costs by 2025,” Ayesha Qazi-Lampert, an environmental science teacher, explained.

The CTU wants to transform the city’s schools into “climate-resilient community hubs,” Qazi-Lampert said to the crowd. To do it, the union wants the school district to install heat pumps, transition to solar and geothermal power, and get all lead contamination out of the school’s drinking water. 

Outside the school campuses, the teachers union wants more green spaces — expanded urban canopies and native gardens that beautify the neighborhood and capture stormwater. 

“Our school buildings were not designed to withstand frequent and immediate hot and cold extremes,” said Qazi-Lampert. “We’re not only testing the integrity of the building materials, but we’re adding stress to already outdated cooling and heating systems.”

It isn’t just physical infrastructure the union wants to modernize, but also what happens inside classrooms and cafeterias. The CTU is calling for expanded career technical education that puts Chicago students on track for jobs in the emerging clean energy economy. And better lunches for the students to keep students full while they learn inside their newly solar-powered school. 

But these updates won’t be quick and they won’t be cheap. Money, especially in the upcoming year, is in short supply. CPS is staring down a nearly $400 million deficit for the next school year as pandemic relief funding is beginning to run dry. 

Read Next

This California high school includes sustainability and green jobs in its curriculum

Anya Kamenetz

On top of impending budgetary shortfalls, CPS’s chief facilities officer, Ivan Hansen, said there is already a massive backlog of deferred updates. “Our total district immediate critical need is over $3 billion and that is just to bring the buildings to a good repair,” he said.

Still, CPS leadership agrees with the union on the broadest points: CPS has a massive footprint across the city, with over 62 millions square feet in building space and most of it is in decline. On the finer details, the city still had questions.

In one instance, David Singler, the energy and sustainability program manager for CPS, rebuffed the union’s plans to install solar panels en masse. “If we were to take every square inch of roof and put a solar panel on it, it would only generate a fraction of the amount of energy that we need in the district to operate our buildings,” he said.  

Before wrapping up its first public bargaining sessions, CPS and CTU agreed to collaborate more closely on grant applications in the future. Most everything else was left in the air. 

But the union is set on getting the district to enshrine its climate-mitigation proposals into the upcoming contract. Davis Gates explains that responding to climate change must be a priority, not just for the union but for the district. 

“That contract means nothing if our Earth is on fire,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Chicago teachers demand climate solutions in their next contract on Jun 18, 2024.

After decades of advocacy, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe will see 18 acres of land returned to them by the state of Minnesota. The move comes after lawmakers passed legislation last month to formally return state trust lands inside the boundaries of the Mille Lacs Band’s reservation.

Minnesota’s returning of Indigenous land is part of a much broader global landback movement that has been gaining momentum in part due to studies that show Indigenous guardianship leads to more effective ecological outcomes. As conserving biodiversity grows more critical amid rising global temperatures, Indigenous self-determination and traditions of relating to land and waters are increasingly recognized as vital climate solutions. 

“This is a great opportunity for us as the Mille Lacs Band to preserve that land in a way that is respectful of nature,” said Kelly Applegate, commissioner of natural resources at the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He said the land transfer is expected to be complete over the next month. “Whatever we do, it’ll be in a lens of environmental protection.” 

The Mille Lacs’ lands in question are known as state trust lands. These trust lands, established at statehood, are grants of land from the federal government primarily created to support education and are found across the western United States. On the Mille Lacs reservation, those 18 acres represent only a fraction of the 2.5 million acres of state trust lands across Minnesota, including nearly 344,000 acres inside the borders of eight reservations. Trust lands in Minnesota typically generate revenue for education through mining, timber, and land sales, and for the 2023-24 school year, trust lands generated almost $49 million for public and charter schools. The trust lands on Mille Lacs, however, have only generated about $45 annually. 

Minnesota is one of 15 states that owns land within federal Indian reservations that generate revenue for non-Indigenous institutions. 

Read Next

At least 10 states quietly own lands within Indian reservations — and profit from them

Maria Parazo Rose & Anna V. Smith, High Country News

“Designating [that land] as a school trust parcel — we had no say in that, it was just a designation that was put upon that land without our original approval,” said Applegate, adding that tribal members never stopped occupying the land in question. He said the band is home to more than 5,000 enrolled members and never relinquished title to the land.

The Mille Lacs measure was 1 of several bills considered by the Minnesota Legislature this year that sought to return land to Indigenous nations and was authored by Senator Mary Kunesh, who has ancestral ties to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and is the first Native woman to serve in the Minnesota Senate. 

A bill to return 3,400 acres from the University of Minnesota to the Fond du Lac Band didn’t pass, but university officials said they’re still committed to returning the property. State lawmakers also considered proposals to give back state land to the Red Lake Nation and return land within White Earth State Forest to White Earth Nation. Both measures died after facing opposition. 

The Mille Lacs measure sets aside $750,000 of state funds for the state commissioner of natural resources to pay project costs such as valuation expenses, closing costs, and legal fees to complete the transfer, but not everyone is happy about the legislation. The Mille Lacs County Board of Commissioners issued a press release condemning the purchase. Dillon Hayes, county administrator of Mille Lacs County, said the transfer violates the state constitution, specifically a requirement that the state must put the land up for public auction. 

“Right, wrong, or otherwise, we really have a process to follow. We have a constitution in the state of Minnesota,” said Hayes. “The board believes that we should be following that process.” 

Hayes said that the estimated value of the parcel within the reservation exceeds more than $1 million due to rising property values, and that state schools are missing out on funding not only from the $750,000 appropriated to purchase the property but also from the higher price the land could have fetched at auction. 

“Federally recognized Indian tribes, like the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, possess the financial means to purchase such lands at public sale,” the board wrote in a press release last week. “This legislation unfairly advantages the tribe at the expense of our local schools and taxpayers.” 

Applegate said it’s unfortunate that the county isn’t supportive. 

“We’re in a new era of restoring land back to Indigenous people, and people shouldn’t feel threatened by that,” Applegate said. “We’re the original caretakers of all of this land, and who better to manage it than the tribal nations?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Mille Lacs Band will see the return of 18 acres of state trust land on Jun 18, 2024.

A landmark law to restore a fifth of the European Union’s land and sea by 2030 has been approved by the European Parliament, following months of delays.

Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s Green climate minister, ended the deadlock at the last minute by breaking with the conservative party of chancellor Karl Nehammer. The move sparked an announcement by the party that it would pursue criminal charges against Gewessler for abuse of power, reported The Guardian.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Leonore Gewessler (@lgewessler)

“Today’s decision is a victory for nature,” Gewessler wrote in a translated post on Instagram. “My conscience tells me unmistakably [that] when the healthy and happy life of future generations is at stake, courageous decisions are needed.”

The proposal for the nature law had been weakened as European elections approached, but even with the concessions, it very nearly didn’t pass on Monday.

“Today marks a significant day for Europe as we transition from merely protecting and conserving nature to actively restoring it,” said César Luena, Spain’s member of parliament who led negotiations for the policy, as reported by The Guardian.

For the restoration law to pass, 55 percent of member states that represented a minimum of 65 percent of the bloc’s population needed to vote in favor.

The necessary majority came after Austria and Slovakia changed their votes, pushing the law over the line by 1.07 percentage points.

“I know I will face opposition in Austria on this, but I am convinced that this is the time to adopt this law,” Gewessler said to reporters, as Reuters reported.

The purpose of the nature restoration law is to reverse the decline of natural habitats in Europe, 81 percent of which are classified as unhealthy, according to the European Environment Agency. The legislation includes set targets, like the restoration of peatlands, an important carbon sink.

Twenty EU countries voted in favor of the law, with Hungary, Itay, Finland, Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden voting against, and Belgium abstaining.

Some countries like the Netherlands had expressed concern that the law would impede wind farm expansion and other economic activities. On Monday, Poland said there was no plan for funding the policy’s protection of nature.

The law includes steps to reverse pollinator declines and requires member states to take measures to help plant a minimum of three billion trees, reported The Guardian.

“There is no time for a break in protecting our environment,” said Alain Maron, the Brussels region’s environment minister, as Euronews reported. “Today, the Council of the EU is choosing to restore nature in Europe, thereby protecting its biodiversity and the living environment of European citizens.”

Environmental activists called the vote “historic,” reported The Guardian.

“Today’s vote is a massive victory for Europe’s nature and citizens who have been long calling for immediate action to tackle nature’s alarming decline,” said an environmental coalition led by WWF Europe, as The Guardian reported.

The post EU Approves Landmark Nature Law to Restore 20% of Land and Sea by 2030 appeared first on EcoWatch.

The endangered Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii) is the last wild horse species on Earth, meaning a type of wild horse that is not a descendent of domesticated horses. But in the 1960s, this horse became extinct in the wild. Now, through a managed breeding and care program by the Prague Zoo, Przewalski’s horse has been returned to Kazakhstan’s Golden Steppe for the first time in at least two centuries.

In early June 2024, two Czech Army CASA aircrafts carried a total of seven Przewalski’s horses to Golden Steppe, an area of open grasslands. The first aircraft with three horses landed on June 4, according to a press release from the Prague Zoo.

“After hundreds of years, first Przewalski’s horses have returned to the steppes of central Kazakhstan,” Miroslav Bobek, the director of the Prague Zoo, said in a press release. “We still have a long way to go, but this was a historic moment. The sight of Zeta II running off into the steppe will never leave my memory.”

On June 6, the remaining four horses were transferred to the grasslands. But the project did not go as smoothly as hoped, as eight horses in total were originally planned for the trip. But in the first batch of horses, one horse named Pelle kept sitting in his crate, which the zoo noted could be dangerous for him during the long journey. Some technical difficulties also led to delays, but overall, the horses were transported safely, marking a successful project.

“This is an event of historical import: the seven ‘Przewalski’s’ that we transported here by two CASA planes represent the first individuals of this species in central Kazakhstan in hundreds of years,” Bobek said in an update. “With this double transport, we have taken a major step towards returning the last wild horse to another area where it was found in the past. Our goal is to slowly transport at least forty individuals here, so that a viable population can be set up. Hardly anything could be a better demonstration of the purpose of modern zoos than the Return of the Wild Horses.”

The horses will roam in an area spanning 80 hectares and will be closely monitored by researchers, EuroNews reported.

Przewalski’s horses were once abundant across Europe and Asia, but environmental changes and competition with livestock and humans led their habitat to shrink, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute reported. Eventually, they became extinct in the wild. But reintroduction projects, like those led by Prague Zoo, have helped return the species to the wild at sites in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China.

The San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park has also led a major breeding program for the species, with more than 157 Przewalski’s horses bred since 1969. According to the zoo, it sends the offspring to reintroduction programs and other zoos to help with species recovery.

As EuroNews reported, Prague Zoo is slated to transfer additional horses to Golden Steppe in 2025. In addition to the 40 total horses Prague Zoo plans to eventually reintroduce to Golden Steppe, the zoo is expected to send more Przewalski’s horses to Mongolia in two years.

“We are still responsible the fact this wild horse disappeared and now we can sort of reverse that, and give it back to nature,” Filip Mašek, spokesperson for Prague Zoo, told the BBC. “To sort of be these Noah’s Arks which have all these endangered species. If it’s possible — and sometimes it’s not — we should try and do everything to return them to their original environments.”

The post Last Wild Horse Species on Earth Saved From Extinction and Returned to Native Habitat appeared first on EcoWatch.