Monthly Archives: April 2022

Environmental racism

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Environmental racism refers to the idea that environmental destruction has a varying impact on individuals with regards to race. According to a research done by the U.S. Congress’s General Accounting Office, in eight distinctive states, ¨75% of the hazardous waste landfill sites were in low-income communities of color.¨(1) This is caused by the fact that communities of higher income tends to live away from environmentally dangerous areas of the city, and those who live in poverty tend to live in places that are more exposed to different kinds of pollutions, including but not limited to air, land, water pollution etc.

Due to this fact, I decided to look at the income of communities of colour and to compare how they might be disproportionately impacted by the environmental racism. ¨In 2019, median household income for Black households was $45,438 compared to $56,113 for Hispanic households, $76,057 for non-Hispanic White households, and $98,174 for Asian households.¨ Black households are 19% more likely to live in places with hazardous waste landfill (56,113 – 45,438)/56113 = 19% than hispanic households. (formula for percentage change)Environmental racism explains to us the urgency to take care of our environment as a means to fight against racism.

Bibliography:

(1) https://www.sustained.kitchen/latest/2020/6/6/fast-facts-on-environmental-racism

(2) https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html

Construction’s Relation to Sustainability

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More often than ever, as a nation, we are witnessing forests and woodlands being torn down. The most common reason for tearing down all of these trees is to start up a new construction cites. Although there are a surplus of different reasons that these trees and animals habitats are being torn down, it eventually all comes down to greed. Most of the buildings that are being constructed are money-making entities. Consider some of the following examples; apartment buildings, storage facilities, casinos, etc. In fact, the amount of trees that are being planted opposed to torn down is an incredibly interesting ratio.

Annually, 15 billion trees are cut down. On the other hand, only 1.9 billion trees are planted a year. That means that the ratio of trees that are cut down to planted is 15 to 1.9. Meaning, for every 1.9 trees that are planted, 15 trees are torn down. To help better understand this idea, “For the 15 billion trees that are chopped down each year, every person on the planet could have 3,000 rolls of toilet paper” (Kilgore, 2022). According to Jonah Bader, “President Joe Biden has announced an ambitious goal of net-zero emissions by 2050… The idea of “net-zero emissions” is that any remaining emissions can be fully offset by so-called “negative emissions” — methods of sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. Planting trees is the most straightforward way to do that. Trees absorb CO2 for photosynthesis and store it as cellulose and lignin, the main components of wood” (Bader, 2021). Furthermore, “Planting trees may also be the most popular climate policy. Even former President Donald Trump loved the idea. He championed an international initiative to plant 1 trillion trees, which would be enough to soak up at least a decade of global emissions” (Bader, 2021). The possibilities are endless when it comes to further studying the ways that construction cites interfere with sustainability.

Works Cited:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/10/opinions/climate-plant-and-cut-trees-down-bader/index.html

How Many Trees Are Planted Each Year > Day > Minute

https://8billiontrees.com/trees/how-many-trees-cut-down-each-year/

Electric Mobility

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Electric cars are new and interesting with technology that has never been seen before. In our lifetimes, we have seen the rise of electric cars as well as the adoption of many motor companies producing hybrid cars. Even our college has electric car charging stations. The use of electric cars has been gradual and patient over time. With the current price of gasoline, many individuals are considering alternate modes of transportation that are more eco-friendly than traditional gas cars. In 2012 there were only 130,000 electric cars sold worldwide. While this is a number larger than I expected for that year, this number is nowhere near what it is modern-day. In 2019, comparatively, 2.2 million electric cars were sold. This represented 2.5% of global car sales. In 2020, the number of electric car rose to three million and represented 4.1% of total car sales. This trend continues with 6.6 million electric cars being sold in 2021 accounting for 9% of the global car market. The change from 2012 to 2021 is a staggering 4976% change. The global adoption of alternative fuel sources is leading to new technologies for human transportation. Those numbers alone from 2012 to 2021 show how popular and promising electric vehicles can continue to be moving into the future. Some food fo thought is although we are moving in a cleaner car direction… if 6.6 million electric cars were sold last year, how much carbon emissions were emitted in the production of so many cars? (Although these cars are better for the environment and reduce an individual’s carbon footprint, it is inevitable for carbon emissions to be attached to the production and transportation of electric vehicles before they are purchased and driven off the lot). It has been estimated that there are now around 16,000,000 electric cars on the road worldwide, but while electric car’s are being consumed at a higher rate, this is being offset by a parallel increase in the sale of SUV’s. It will be interesting to see what the automotive industries do in the coming years and how the auto-market will react and balance. Stay tuned.

Sources:
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supply-challenges-to-more-than-double-global-sales

Climate change and human health

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While we often think about the environmental effects of climate change, we don’t always consider how those environmental changes can affect human health.  Global warming is one of the most prevalent issues associated with climate change and while many people have noticed the effects of this issue, not many know the health issues that come from this increased global temperature. According to the EPA, unusually hot summers with high temperatures and heat waves have become more and more common over the years.  With this increase in hot weather comes an increase in heat related deaths. For instance, the rate of heat related deaths in the United States has increased from 1979-2018.  In 1979, the rate of deaths was 0.240 per million people.  In 2018, that increased to 1.635 per million people, making the total change 1.395 per million people and making the percent change between 1979 and 2018 a 581.25% increase.  With a growth factor of 6.81, you can see the large increase in deaths caused by heat in the last 40 years alone.  Climate change, especially global warming, can have an extreme adverse effect on human health, which we are already starting to see.  If we don’t do something to keep the global temperatures from becoming even more extreme, we can expect to see the rise in heat related deaths become even higher.

 

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-related-deaths

Fast Fashion’s Effect on Environment

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Since the Pandemic, shopping online has increased tremendously.  With that being said, it’s not uncommon that many people try to find the cheapest “dupes” of high quality clothes.  The fashion industry itself consumes one tenth of the water used industrially to clean products and run factories.  Thinking about the total amount of water used to produce one cotton shirt that would be about 3,000 liters of water used.  Not only is the water usage a big problem but fast fashion is responsible for higher carbon emissions than both international flights and maritime shipping combined.  Within the next decade, an increase of 50% of carbon emissions is expected if we continue this trend.

A 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature had stated 35% of all micro plastics in the ocean come from synthetic clothing like polyester.  Since Fast Fashion is in high demand of products in a short period of time, the amount of waste emitted into the air is heavily weighed upon fashion, with 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon being emitted due to the fashion industry.  This is why it’s so important to stop shopping at stores such as Shein and forever 21 producing an exuberant amount of cotton and polyester, which not only puts the workers and farmers at harm when using toxic pesticides to grow the products, but many workers get injured due to the poor working conditions these fast fashion companies put their employees in.   Thrifting old garments is an excellent way of decreasing the amount of carbon emission as well as lowering the water usage for production.

resources:

https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment

Fast Fashion and Its Environmental Impact

Fast Fashion’s Environmental Impact: The True Price Of Trendiness

Carbon Emissions

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The United States emitted a grand total of 5,222 million metric tonnes of CO2 in 2020, which was an 11% decrease following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this downward trend would prove to be only temporary. However, in comparison to 2005 CO2 emission levels, there was a 21% decrease, which I found to be interesting. In 2020 alone, carbon dioxide accounted for  ~79% of GHG emissions, while nitrous oxide, methane, and various fluorinated gases made up the other 21%. 27% of these emissions were caused by transportation alone, electricity contributed to 1/4 of these emissions, and the rest were sectioned off into industry, commercial usage, and, unsurprisingly, agricultural energy consumption. Ten years prior, the overall emission measurement (circa 2010) fell around 5,594 million metric tonnes, which while not a huge difference, really puts things in perspective. If we could somehow figure out a balance between all the above aspects of everyday life, and managed to cut back on energy consumption in a realistic yet sustainable way, it would be for the better.

 

 

 

 

sources:

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/

US Energy Consumption

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The US in 2018 had a record high energy consumption of 101.3 Quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) then when comparing this to the US consumption of energy in 2020 there was a decrease to 92.94 quadrillions British thermal units. When doing the math this was actually a decay factor of 0.0825. I found that this was interesting that our energy consumption in the US actually decreased during the Covid shutdown. However when I think about it a large part of energy consumption comes from office buildings, factories, and such which were shut down during this time. Reducing your energy consumption is important on an individual level and can have a large effect on your carbon footprint.

Sustainable Carbon Emissions

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Carbon Dioxide emissions are crucial to address when concerning climate change and global warming. Industrial Revolutions have been occurring for about 200 years and are still happening in countries today. Carbon emissions contribute to the overall heating of the Earth, the IPCC has made goals to try to limit heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial level. If our emissions continue on the trend they’re on we will pass by the 1.5-degree mark quickly. According to the Mauna Loa Record Keeling Curve in 1960 the carbon concentration levels were at about 315ppm fast forward to 2020 where it reached about 415ppm. That’s an overall change of 100ppm, 32% increase, growth factor of 1.32, and an average rate of change of 1.67ppm/yr. It’s difficult to enforce and make policies to ensure fair and equal emission standards. There’s a lot of debate over levels and who should be held responsible for the emissions and countries have to be able to industrialize as well. But there is a lot of promise in the renewable energy field. Many innovations, jobs, and decreased use of carbon would result in helping decrease the concentration levels from contributing to the warming of the Earth.

https://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mauna_loa_record.html

CO2 Emissions Rise

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Continuing a blog topic from 2 posts ago, I wanted to zero in on the rise in CO2 emissions during my lifetime. I was born in 2002, where global CO2 emissions were 26.04 billion tonnes. Fast forward to our most recent data, with the 2021 global CO2 emissions were 36.4 billion tonnes. That’s a total change of 10.36 billion tonnes. The percent change of that data would roughly be a 40% (39.78%, to be exact) increase with a growth factor of 1.4.

While there has been some fluctuation in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, on average the increase in emissions has remained steady. It’s scary to think about, but the total change, percent change, and growth factor could all possibly be even larger if the pandemic hadn’t happened. It’s important to reduce our personal, every day CO2 emissions, and hopefully we’ll live to see a time where the CO2 emissions have a decay factor instead.

Sources:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/

Livestock and Sustainability

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As a society, we eat a lot of food but are only beginning to understand the bi-products of producing meat on such a large scale. Emissions related to the livestock industry are carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and ammonia (NH3). Livestock and the food industry are a big contributing factor to climate change and I think that there isn’t enough attention to how the industry is impacting the environment. Due to such a high demand for cattle, researchers believe that the increased cattle rearing will help produce 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2030.  The livestock industry is responsible for 68% of enterogenic nitrous oxide emissions,  64% of total ammonia emissions, and 35–40% of methane emissions worldwide. Methane is a 23-1 greater potential to warm the planet compared to carbon dioxide. I want to look into this topic more because I feel like this is a big issue and I am not very familiar with it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518108/#:~:text=Livestock%20emit%20almost%2064%25%20of,40%25%20of%20methane%20emissions%20worldwide.