• what is the cop26 draft text — and what does it mean? this article explains how this starting document was drafted by the uk presidency and reflects what has been shared in glasgow over cop26. next, each delegation consulted with their country’s leadership and proposed revisions. 

• the new draft of the cop26 agreement was released early friday. will all 197 parties sign it, following these revisions? this cnn analysis says it includes “unprecedented language” around fossil fuels, despite pressure from the coal, oil, and gas industries, but it essentially defers more action on emissions until cop27. 

• together, china and u.s. say they’ll “enhance” climate action. the countries, the two largest climate polluters, vowed to do more to cut greenhouse gases in a joint “glasgow declaration” that commits beijing to addressing its methane emissions. 

• how can we measure success at cop? why can’t the cop swoop in and save us? so how do we critically reflect on what the conference can do for us while acknowledging its shortcomings — and not giving up hope?

thanks for following us during this series! you can see planet forward’s other cop26-related coverage in the road to cop26 and climate hits home. 

• here’s what happened so far at cop26, and what lies ahead. tune in to this 4-minute listen from npr’s dan charles to check in with the conference’s progress, published at the halfway mark of cop26.

• the cheap and easy climate fix that can cool the planet fast. at cop26, more than 100 countries signed the new global methane pledge with the goal of cutting 30% of their methane emissions by 2030. but why are methane emissions so harmful, and how big is the problem? what fixes could be done to reduce their effects? this article answers all your questions with easy scientific explanations and interactive graphs.

• 16 companies that are rethinking packaging. today at cop26, unilever is holding a panel on sustainable business practices, from biodegradable material in packaging to responsible business practices that respect natural ecosystems and reduce waste. food tank highlights 16 food and beverage companies to exhibit the industry’s various approaches to sustainable packaging.

check back tomorrow for more info on what is being explored at cop26 — and good reads to keep you informed!

—

sources:

https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/can-seaweed-cut-methane-emissions-on-dairy-farms/

https://caes.ucdavis.edu/news/articles/2018/may/can-seaweed-cut-methane-emissions-on-dairies

http://www.fao.org/in-action/enteric-methane/background/en/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/forests-of-seaweed-can-help-climate-change-without-fire/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/food/the-plate/2016/11/seaweed-may-be-the-solution-for-burping-cows/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/

they pockmarked hard rock with acid while storing earth’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere into the ground.

years later, plants and bacteria followed — establishing themselves in the porous beachheads the fungi carved-out.

the three kingdoms became fast allies, and across a geological timescale of about 400 million years, have partnered in various ways to make earth the oxygen- and soil-rich world it is today.

but human activity is throwing off the storied balance the kingdoms have built — most notably by emitting carbon dioxide that warms the planet. thankfully, earth’s ecological system will step up to bat, and store or eat the problem greenhouse gases just as it always has. while the system can’t wholly make up for a human-induced imbalance of atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists are finding ways for humans to resolve the crisis. the solutions, they say, are literally underneath our feet.

what about gas released from thawing ice?

methane, a greenhouse gas frozen by the megatons in earth’s melting ice, holds the potential to dramatically turn up the thermostat for the planet. but new research shows that a bacterial hero from earth’s soils and seas will keep the thawing gas at bay.

methane-eating soil microbes will prevent large plumes of methane from reaching the atmosphere as frozen deposits of it begin to thaw due to climate change, according to a paper in nature published by vasilii petrenko and jeffrey severinghaus of the scripps institution of oceanography at the university of california, san diego. while severinghaus doesn’t study microbes directly, he’s able to show their effect on past climates by going to antarctica and sampling ancient air.

scientists previously thought thawing methane deposits may have caused an abrupt 50% rise in atmospheric methane concentration during a rapid warming period at the end of the younger dryas, a cold period that ended 11,600 years ago. the prospect raised alarms to a potentially devastating climate feedback from methane, which, molecule for molecule, traps at least 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

through 10 years of sampling ancient air, severinghaus, his graduate students and the rest of his team were able to show, however, that during the warming period, no detectable methane in the atmosphere came from thawed deposits.

they demonstrated this by looking at the radiocarbon content of 11,600-year-old antarctic ice, exhuming a ton for each measurement at a precise and narrow vein of ancient ice originally deposited by snowfall on younger dryas glaciers. they gathered a corresponding control of modern-day air, cleaned of carbon-14, for each measurement as well.

carbon-14 is a naturally occurring radioactive carbon isotope. it builds up in the air and in all living organic things, as cosmic rays bombard atoms in the atmosphere, and is used in carbon dating. 

the carbon-14 distinction is important because methane released from thawed deposits has no carbon-14 — it’s so old that the radiocarbon content decayed long ago. but methane released from natural sources such as wetlands is fresh, and does have detectable carbon-14. 

severinghaus said: “if that 50% increase in methane concentration was actually caused by the tundra getting warm and burping out all of this methane, then the concentration of carbon-14 relative to the abundant carbon-12 should have gone down by 30%. we should really see a huge signal if this idea is correct … and we don’t.”

he goes on to explain that methane-consuming soil microbes must have stopped most of the thawing methane from reaching the atmosphere — just as their oceanic cousins did when they ate 99.9% of the methane released during the deepwater horizon oil spill in 2010.

wetlands, which belch methane when it rains, and other natural sources were the main culprits for the rise in methane during the younger dryas warming period, severinghaus said.

“if it didn’t happen back then, it won’t happen now and it won’t happen in the future,” severinghaus said. “we can focus our attention back on carbon dioxide, which really is the problem, and not worry so much about methane. so check one thing off the list.”

but how do tiny soil microbes store carbon? 

pockets of soil with low oxygen levels are the key to slowing dead-plant-eating and carbon-dioxide-emitting microbes.

new research fleshes out the role these bb gun pellet-sized granules and clumps of dirt play in the global carbon cycle, concluding they help offset emissions from well-aerated soil. so-called “aerobic” soil contributes a third of annual carbon dioxide emissions, and that may grow as low-oxygen, “anaerobic” pockets get disturbed by warming and human activity, the authors report in their study published in nature.

study coauthor scott fendorf, professor of earth sciences at stanford, said, “your food might spoil faster at a higher temperature; that’s because the microbes are eating faster. so, in the soil, the same thing [happens], the microbes start decomposing the plant material more rapidly, and that means carbon dioxide is being made to a greater extent.”

fendorf and his team were able to show how the current understanding of soil is flawed. climate models that deliver temperature projections often treat all upland soil — literally soil at a higher elevation — as aerated. the team found that pockets of asphyxiated soil can and have existed in such environments — thanks to periodic flooding or any number of oxygen-depriving natural occurrences. 

fendorf and his coauthors found spots where old, carbon-rich plant parts still existed. in a 100% aerobic environment they wouldn’t be there, because energized-by-oxygen microbes would eat all the carbon and send it up to the atmosphere as a gas.

the team learned that when microbes have to use a different gas for air, they work far less efficiently — emitting carbon dioxide at a tenth of the speed than well-aerated soil would.

fendorf added that climate models are evolving to accurately portray the impact low-oxygen pockets have on the global carbon cycle.

“if the temperature and moisture content was all the same, then you could just calibrate models and you’d be fine,” fendorf said. “but when it starts shifting — if it gets warmer or it gets wetter or drier — then your model has to account for those changes” within both aerobic and anaerobic soils, allowing scientists to better track the resulting carbon dioxide levels.

the authors say we can help retain the pockets where microbes are less efficient — and help reduce carbon emissions — by tilling soil less. the fewer passes a tiller makes, the fewer pockets spill their uneaten bits of carbon to hungry microbes. an increasing number of farmers already have reduced tilling to help reduce their carbon footprints.

but the authors also warn of an increase in the range of dry conditions caused by climate change. anaerobic pockets surrounded by compacted and moist dirt will bake and turn aerobic, and that will lead to more emissions, as long as it doesn’t get too hot for the microbes to function efficiently.

‘re-greening’ could cover 37% of co2 cuts needed by 2030

carbon capture and storage technologies are being deployed in a piecemeal way, ensuring a negligible impact on the atmosphere and its growing concentration of planet-warming carbon dioxide. photosynthesis however is alive and well, storing billions of tons of carbon each year.

via giphy (nasa photosynthesis visualization from 2013)

a study published in october by the nature conservancy and 15 other institutions identified the cheapest ways humans can leverage nature to reduce emissions, factoring in a number of cost constraints, like not reducing food production. they found replanting forests and preventing their loss in countries like brazil and russia can have the greatest, cost-effective impact on the atmosphere. in other countries, the study identifies better agricultural practices and wetland preservation as major emission-reducing pathways.

all told, the pathways can account for 37% of the cuts needed to atmospheric carbon dioxide to keep the world from warming past 2 degrees celsius from pre-industrial levels.

“the vast majority of the scenarios that have been modeled by climate scientists include a very large contribution of what’s called negative emissions technology. carbon capture and storage would be an example of that,” said coauthor bronson griscom, an ecological accountant for the nature conservancy.

“natural climate solutions are the only mature negative emissions technology that we have right now, the only form of negative emissions that we can deploy globally, today, at a cost effective level,” he added.

the researchers assume a social cost for carbon dioxide pollution, and that carbon has value, as is the case in cap and trade deals. cap and trade is where government comes in and “caps” the amount of carbon dioxide a company can emit. if they want to emit more, all they have to do is buy carbon credits from another company.

for example, chevrolet paid the university of illinois at urbana-champaign $1 million in 2014 for 150,000 metric tons of carbon credits. the university has since used the money to invest in a grass-fed boiler to heat a greenhouse on campus, which used to be heated by propane.

locally sourced and grown fuel has a much smaller impact on the atmosphere. additionally, the feedstock used in the boiler, like the crop miscanthus, grows year-round and therefore the fields it comes from aren’t tilled nearly as often as a corn field.

tilling spurs microbes to emit more carbon, and if all corn in the midwest were changed to miscanthus, the region would turn from a net carbon dioxide contributor to a carbon storehouse. that’s according to a study published in 2011 that didn’t account for economic factors. they followed it up with another in 2016 that did.

“we considered including a pathway like grassland restoration, and at a global level, we concluded that it wasn’t likely going to be a sizeable pathway. because of our basic constraint that we maintain the current footprint of agriculture,” griscom said. “having said that, as countries start to look at their options, there are some countries that should be looking into grassland restoration as an important opportunity.”

griscom’s next study, likely to be published sometime this year, focuses on the united states, and one pathway they investigate is grassland restoration. he said the united states has a wide range of options available to it to help the earth system make up for an imbalance in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

“nature is often seen as a victim of climate change, but it’s also a huge part of the solution,” griscom said. “if you think of nature as a machine, it’s an incredibly powerful machine. it would behoove us to turn that machine on full power.”

that’s pretty heavy news to stomach with your burger, but the evidence is mounting. according to the food and agriculture organization of the un, 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the production of livestock.  

our current world population is hovering around 7.5 billion people, but more than 800 million of which are dealing with hunger – or, one in nine. and even more — one in three — are suffering from malnutrition.

this seemingly contradicts reports, like this study from mcgill university and university of minnesota, that show we grow enough food to feed 10 billion people.

you may wonder how those going hungry can get their piece of the agriculture pie — and where all that extra food is going.

researchgate reports that a majority of crops such as wheat and corn, are used in the creation of biofuels and the cultivation of livestock. from an outsider’s point of view, it appears wealthy countries have prioritized the meat and automobile industries over feeding those in need.  

perhaps surprisingly, it’s not the availability of food that causes world hunger but, rather, poverty. the un-fao also found that most of the world’s poor population lives in rural areas in which they are subsistence farmers, meaning they only produce enough for their family to survive — and that’s only if everything goes right during the growing season.

demand and resource usage

so how does eating meat contribute to global poverty and, hence, global hunger? it comes down to supply and demand. as developed countries and developing countries continue to demand more meat, farmers will need to utilize more land to fulfill these needs.  

the un-fao reports 33% of all cropland is used for livestock feed, as well as 26% of all the earth’s ice-free land is used for grazing purposes. to provide the heavily demanded animal products, the livestock industry also uses one third of the earth’s freshwater supply, according to the proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america.

as more land and water is utilized to create animal products, that creates a scarcity in land and water for poor people in developing countries. this scarcity causes the prices of land and water to increase, making it harder for poor populations to gain access to these resources.   

if the western world wants to solve the problem of world hunger, we must correct our own eating habits first. the more meat we demand on a regular basis means that there is less food and water available on the earth. it takes about 1,799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef — the equivalent of about 22 bathtubs full of water, or more than three weeks of baths every day — according to food tank. in comparison, the 108 gallons of water it takes to make one pound of corn doesn’t seem so bad.

the meat industry isn’t just a strain on the water supply, it is also a strain on the atmosphere as well. one ton of methane gas has the same greenhouse effect as 23 tons of carbon dioxide. and according to the conversation: “around 1.6-2.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, mostly methane, are produced from livestock digestion. another 1.3-2.0 billion tonnes of nitrous oxide come from producing feed for livestock. and the final 1.6 billion tonnes comes from land use changes, such as clearing for animal pastures.”

what can we do about it?

in a perfect world, upon learning this, everyone would eat a vegan diet to use less of the earth’s resources, and increase the availability of said resources to those who are starving, while simultaneously cutting greenhouse gas emissions. of course, worldwide veganism is an unrealistic goal — not to mention this would cause other economic issues, based on the all the industries this change would impact.

instead, individuals could try to minimize their consumption of meat. americans, here’s a thought: maybe we don’t need beef every single day, let alone put bacon on everything.

again, we go back to supply and demand. if consumers demand less meat, those resources could be directed toward other food avenues, which increases the chances of starving populations to obtain food security.

world governments also could be taking action. a scientific analysis published in the journal nature climate change, suggests implementing an emissions tax on the meat industry would change consumption patterns.

but influencing human behavior is a difficult task. egalitarians may take personal responsibility for the impact our eating habits have on others and the earth. however, it is just as unrealistic to expect a worldwide adoption of veganism as it is to assume most individuals would consider their daily actions through an egalitarian lens.  

however, if we truly want to help ease world hunger and reduce our impact on climate change, we must modify our eating habits on an international scale – and having governments around the world adopt emissions taxes on meat is one way to help accomplish that change. 

prior to the industrial revolution, most societies did not consume meat on a daily basis, unless you’re family was amongst the elite class. only in the modern era of human consumption have we forgotten that meat is supposed to be a luxury, not a necessity. world hunger and climate change are strong reminders that such indulgences do not come without consequence.

faisalabad, the third largest city in pakistan, has begun developing 10 biogas plants this november, under the supervision of pakistan domestic biogas programme (pdbp). these plants will have the capacity to hold 50 to 100 meters of biogas and will be used to generate electricity. in the united states, the american biogas council signed a contract with envitec biogas, a german-based company, to begin plant development in new york. 

_{originally posted december 27, 2010}

lets make learning about the environment a less dreadful process and lets think about creative ways we can get our point across to different crowds. very few environmental videos i watch make a lasting impression on me, so this was my attempt to make an impression on you. i think its time to explore other ways we can communicate the importance, the possibilities and the beauty of saving the earth. working with mother nature is one of the most pure ways to live your life. how our species decided the earth comes second to our greeds and needs is beyond me. i would be lying if i told you i never littered or left the water running when i brushed my teeth, but i try and thats all we can make people do. i encourage you to make a conscious effort to be a more conservative user as well as explore new resources such as cow manure. before the internet, a bunch of environmentalist activist got together an decided they needed to make a holiday for the earth. they promoted through word of mouth, drawings, posters and any way they could. today we have more way to reach people then ever, we just have to figure out how to use the tools we have. the enviromental revolution these activist started is still in effect today, we are the next generation. this is the first of many enviromental videos, blogs, comedy skits, road-trips and movies to come. stay tuned

the energy in wastewater treatment most commonly comes from carbon containing organic matter. bacteria convert organic matter into methane, a combustible fuel that can be burned to generate power. in addition to carbon containing organic matter, there is also nitrogen in wastewater. unfortunately, current treatment processes don’t recover energy from waste nitrogen. but what if we could convert waste nitrogen into a combustible gas, just like converting organic matter into methane? it turns out we can! that’s where the rockets come in. bacteria are capable of converting waste nitrogen into nitrous oxide… yeah, nitrous oxide. the same stuff your dentist gives you, although dentists usually call it “laughing gas”. it’s also the same gas racecar enthusiasts use to supercharge their engines, although they call it “nitrox”. it’s also the same gas that has been used for decades in rockets. in fact, space ship one, the first privately manned spaceplane that is paving the way for sub-orbital space flights open to the public, used nitrous oxide in its rocket motors. it’s powerful stuff and we can get it for free from wastewater! at stanford we are developing a way to get bacteria to convert waste nitrogen into nitrous oxide, thus enabling energy recovery from both waste carbon and nitrogen. by producing nitrous oxide, we could essentially “supercharge” wastewater treatment, kind of like a nitrox turbocharged racecar.

wastewater treatment may not take us to the moon, but it can provide a serious amount of free and clean energy. considering that the treatment of wastewater consumes 3% of u.s. energy supply and wastewater treatment plants are often the highest energy expenditure for cities, generating power from wastes seems like a really good idea.

efficient hydrogen storage remains a bottleneck for the upcoming hydrogen economy. however, mofs may offer a solution because of the distinctive qualities they possess such as large, overall pore volume and surface area, adjustable pore sizes and a tunable framework.

these remarkable materials can potentially fill the niche between other physisorbents, such as activated carbon, that have similar uptake capacities at low temperatures but little attraction to hydrogen at ambient temperature, and chemical sorbents such as hydrides, that have high hydrogen uptakes but undesirable release energy and heat issues.

team members continue to explore the potential of novel, efficient, inexpensive and environmentally friendly sorbents to store energy-related gases such as hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. mofs are crystalline frameworks consisting of metal ions and organic ligands–ions or molecules that bind to the metal ions. in some cases, pores inside an open mof are stable after removal of guest molecules (often solvents) and the mof can be used for gas storage.

the compounds studied by the zhou group were characterized through diffraction studies using the high-energy beamline at chemmatcars, a high-brilliance synchrotron x-ray facility supported by nsf.

the flex powerstation produces electricity from the widest range of fuels down to as low as 5% methane. it can be used in any application that produces methane such as landfills, waste water treatment plants, oil fields, coal mines and dairy digesters. the technology produces near zero emissions
, operates on gases down to 50 btu/scf (1700 kj/m3), has an internal cogeneration system available and has a small footprint.

the flex turbine mt250 is capable of running on a variety of fuel gases – from pipeline-quality natural gas to oilfield associated gas to biogas. it also meets california air resources board (carb) standards, which are the strictest standards in the world. it provides a number of operations that produce or use methane, the main component of natural gas, with a clean and efficient way to turn it into continuous energy.

got a better idea? submit your own energy innovation