Equilibrium/Sustainability — Island willing to sue for climate reparations

The low-lying island nation of Vanuatu is calling on leading climate polluters like the U.S. to help fund its adaptation to rising seas. 

In its revised climate plan, the nation announced it would use all legal means to slow the climate change that could lead to its destruction.  

Vanuatu currently faces climate-linked crises such as more powerful storms, the death of coral reefs through ocean acidification and the disappearance of beaches due to sea-level rise. 

“Through no fault of its own considering its negligible contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, Vanuatu is already experiencing devastating effects of climate change,” officials wrote in the U.N. filing.  

Vanuatu contributes just 0.0016 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the plan. 

The U.S., meanwhile contributes nearly 15 percent. That’s about twice as much as India (7 percent) and half as much as China (30 percent), according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

But the U.S. is the largest historic contributor to climate change and responsible for 20 percent of all climate-heating gases released worldwide since 1850, according to Carbon Brief. 

For Vanuatu, this is a question of legal damages, and in the plan, its representatives declared its intent to secure legal remedy. 

“Where U.N. mechanisms are unable to provide adequate relief from loss and damage resulting from the negligent actions of fossil fuel-related companies and the states that subsidize them, Vanuatu will seek redress elsewhere,” the plan stated. 

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.

Today we’ll see how compounding crises have brought two African regions to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. Then we’ll look at unsettling evidence that the world’s most popular weedkiller causes convulsions in animals.  

Kids in African drought on verge of ‘catastrophe’

Children in two regions of Africa could die in devastating numbers due to the combined effects of malnutrition and water-borne illnesses, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday. 

Horn of Africa and the Sahel: Children at particular risk are those who live in the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — and several countries across the semi-arid Sahel region, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, according to the agency. 

UNICEF issued the warning in conjunction with the first day of World Water Week — a conference organized annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute — which began on the same morning. 

Risk multiplier: “History shows that when high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children combine with deadly outbreaks of diseases like cholera or diarrhea, child mortality rises dramatically – and tragically,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement. 

• “When water either isn’t available or is unsafe, the risks to children multiply exponentially,” Russell continued.  
  
• “Across the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, millions of children are just one disease away from catastrophe,” she added.   

Malnutrition rates are climbing: More than 2.8 million children across these two regions are already enduring acute malnutrition, which puts them at up to 11 times greater risk of dying from water-borne illnesses than their well-nourished peers, according to UNICEF. 

To see more country-specific data, please click here for the full story.  

Scientists link weedkiller to convulsions in animals 

Scientists have identified a link between the world’s most commonly used weedkiller and convulsions in animals, according to a study released on Tuesday.  

Their findings, published in Scientific Reports, raise questions about the herbicide’s potential effect on the human nervous system as well.   

Decoding the effects of glyphosate: Exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, increased seizure-like behavior in soil-dwelling roundworms — a species often used by scientists studying human development.   

• With glyphosate use expected to rise dramatically over the coming years, understanding its possible effects on human health is critical, the authors said in a statement. 
  
• Just last month, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that more than 80 percent of urine sampled by the agency was at or above the detection limit for glyphosate, as The Hill reported.  

Testing glyphosate and Roundup: The researchers said they used the roundworm C. elegans to test the effects of both pure glyphosate and of commercial formulations of Bayer’s Roundup, which contain the compound.  

• They found that glyphosate exacerbated convulsions in C. elegans and concluded that a receptor protein called GABA-A was the neurological target for the bodily changes.  
  
• In humans, these receptors are essential to locomotion and contribute to sleep and mood regulation.    

How did Bayer respond? An emailed statement from Bayer said that research conducted with worms “does not meet the scientific standards necessary to predict effects on humans or other mammals for the purposes of a pesticide safety assessment.” 

“Scientists that have reviewed all of the available data have concluded that neither glyphosate nor the other ingredients in glyphosate-based herbicides will harm the nervous system at doses much greater than what any human would be exposed to,” the company said. 

The uniqueness of C. elegans: While Tuesday’s study did employ roundworms and not mammals, scientists often study C. elegans to gain an understanding about human diseases and development, as they share a common ancestor.  

• The study also revealed a significant distinction between exposure to glyphosate alone and Roundup.  
  
• Exposure to Roundup increased the percentage of C. elegans that did not recover from seizure activity.   

To read the full story, please click here. 

China EV boom draws in airlines, real estate entities

Chinese airline conglomerate Juneyao Group announced on Tuesday that it would begin exploring a move into building electric vehicles (EVs), Reuters reported.  

With this decision, Juneyao will join a wide range of non-automaker Chinese companies rushing into the sector 

• Juneyao rose from popular manufacturer of dairy products for children to control one of the country’s largest airlines. 
  
• But it has suffered from the continuing disruptions that pandemic lockdowns have posed to China’s internal travel. 

A growing trend: Juneyao’s foray into automobiles puts it alongside other nontraditional entrants into China’s booming EV market.  

Some of those firms include beleaguered real estate giant Evergrande, search engine leader Baidu and smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. 

What about competitors? Domestic leader BYD has risen to become one of the world’s most valuable carmakers, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Goldman Sachs expects it to control 45 percent of China’s plug-in electric market by 2025, according to the Journal. 

• BYD has been buoyed by friendly policies from Beijing and its own commitment to making its own chips and batteries. 
  
• This self-sufficient approach has allowed the company to avoid the supply chain snarls that have tripped up rivals like Tesla. 

Supply chain concerns owing to China’s ongoing coronavirus control measures seemed to account for the slump in EV manufacturer XPeng’s stock price on Tuesday morning — even as the company’s production totals outpaced those of many Chinese rivals, Investor’s Business Daily reported.  

MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE PACIFIC

Carmakers selling in the U.S. market are struggling to reorient their operations to the new world opened up by the Inflation Reduction Act, a Biden administration climate and health package that recently became law.  

To be eligible for a lucrative tax credits under that package, cars must include a battery made in the U.S. from materials mined and refined in North America — forcing a global realignment of supply chains, as The Hill reported. 

• Ford Motor Company is cutting 3,000 white-collar jobs in the U.S., India and Canada in an effort to “redeploy” resources toward its new electric lines, CNBC reported. 
  
• South Korea-based Hyundai — whose U.S. buyers are ineligible for subsidies funded by the climate deal because cars like the IONIQ 6 aren’t produced in America — aims to break ground on a $5.5 billion factory by as early as the end of 2022.

Mass supply will take time: “It is going to be a tough few years” for U.S. EV adoption, Gregory Pierce of the University of California at Los Angeles told The Washington Post.  

“There is just a shortage of EVs most people can afford, even when you stack all the incentives,” Pierce added. 

Fully recyclable windmill blades on horizon  

Future windmill blades could be repurposed into countertops, cars or even sweet, edible confections like gummy bears, scientists revealed on Tuesday. 

That could help the wind industry fix what is perhaps its biggest sustainability problem: the current challenge of breaking down football field-sized windmill blades at the end of their lives. 

An endless loop: A new plant-and-petroleum composite resin could be used to make windmill blades — and then melted down for a myriad of other uses, according to researchers from Michigan State University, who presented their concept at the American Chemical Society’s annual fall meeting.  

“The beauty of our resin system is that at the end of its use cycle, we can dissolve it, and that releases it from whatever matrix it’s in so that it can be used over and over again in an infinite loop,” coauthor John Dorgan said in a statement.  

What kind of products? First off, windmills. The team made small-scale turbines out of thermoplastic (heat-treated) resins — then melted them down and recast them into new panels which kept the same properties as the original. 

• They also mixed the resin with other materials to make a “cultured stone” suitable for making household objects like bathroom sinks. 
  
• Other additives made the resin suitable for injection molding — used to create items like power tools — or making the absorbent fluff that fills diapers. 

Then there were the gummy bears: “We recovered food-grade potassium lactate and used it to make gummy bear candies, which I ate,” Dorgan said. 

Solving one problems, leaving other: Windmill blades are so difficult to recycle that they are often just burned for fuel. 

While the Michigan State team appears to have solved that problem on the laboratory scale, Dorgan noted that mass production would require large supplies of plant-derived bioplastics — a resource that doesn’t currently exist. 

Tree Tuesday

China combats forest fires, with autumn harvest at risk 

• Firefighters in China’s southwestern regions of Chongqing and Sichuan battled blazes in the area’s forests on Tuesday, while the country’s autumn harvest remained under serious threat amid an ongoing drought, according to Reuters. Officials raised a fire “red alert,” cautioning that circumstances had become “extremely dangerous” in these forested areas. 

Dozens of tree species facing extinction: study 

• More than 100 native species of trees in the lower 48 states are facing possible extinction due to invasive insects, diseases and climate change, according to a new study, covered by The Hill’s Changing America. The report, published in the journal Plants People Planet, found that between 11 and 16 percent of all tree species in the contiguous are at risk of disappearing.   

Brazil can produce more food without deforestation: presidential frontrunner 

• Brazil’s left-leaning presidential frontrunner Lula da Silva said that his country could increase its farm output without a corresponding rise in deforestation by converting existing cattle pasture to row crops like soy beans and sugarcane, Reuters reported. “If the world is willing to help, keeping a tree standing in the Amazon may be worth more than any (other) investment,” da Silva said, per Reuters. 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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