Maryland one of three states participating in Wind Energy consortium

 Good news for offshore wind energy in Maryland! Maryland is joining with Virginia and North Carolina to work together toward increasing the availability of offshore wind. Maryland has much less ocean coast, but a) the project in MD may be further along, and b) there is some hope that turbines can be manufactured in Maryland, though that may be just a rumor. While any industry can pollute, hopefully having it in a place like Maryland with environmental safeguards in place will ensure that production limits the impacts as much as possible. 

Could this be an opening part of the Green New Deal or something like it? Biden's not a fan- and he may not win regardless- but hopefully folks around the country are interested in finally doing some infrastructure development. We will see!

Total costs vs. externality costs

 They come right out and say it just like it's regular English! :) From vox.com

2. Plastic produces external costs that are almost equal to its total market value

The plastics industry imposes all kinds of costs on society that it doesn’t have to pay (“externalities”): It emits carbon dioxide, it generates air pollution, it must be collected and sorted, and a great deal of it ends up in the ocean.

Adding up all those costs, drawing on the latest research, the report comes up with with a total externalities cost of between $800 and $1,400 per tonne, with “at least $1,000” used as a reasonable rule of thumb.

...

All told, then, a tonne of plastic imposes about $1,000 in unpaid external costs, which is about $1 per kilogram, or $350 billion a year. “The average cost of a tonne of plastic is $1,000 - $1,500,” the report says, “so the subsidy from the rest of society to the plastics industry is only a little less than the total sales value of the industry.”

Those “unpaid” external costs are being paid today, of course — they don’t vanish. It’s just that they are overwhelmingly being paid by poor people and people living in poor countries, the ones living next to toxic incinerators, gathering plastic waste, and living with the most concentrated air and water pollution.

Fracking and radioactivity

While we have known for awhile that infants near frack sites are worse off, we have only recently learned that one reason for that might be radioactivity. It turns out that pulling gas and oil out of the ground seems to bring up some bad with the good, 

Fracking & climate change

Last night's vice presidential debate highlighted opposing views of climate change: one wants to cast doubt on whether it's influenced by humans and another... wants to avoid banning fracking.

Is that all we've got? There are some good arguments for continuing fracking- basically that it's better than coal- but those arguments are losing ground as more methane emissions come to be associated with fracking. 

This 2019 article, republished after today's debate, reflects this ambiguity. If fracking can be done well, limiting methane emissions, then it's a huge resource that shouldn't be overlooked, particularly in places that are near former coal mining areas. On the other hand if all of the emissions "saved" are in fact going up into the atmosphere, well, maybe we should use more wind or nuclear. 

Guess who does urban agriculture?

Hint: it's not poor people! Urban agriculture requires a lot of time and energy for a relatively small product. Not saying it's a bad idea, just that it's important to be realistic about where our food can and should come from. Urban agriculture just isn't an option for most.

Recycling plastics is basically a lie

 Make plastic is very cheap and easy, and consumers love it. Unfortunately it is very costly to sort plastics and the recycling process degrades the material, so at best it can survive reprocessing only once or twice. Much of the "recycling" that you see in your community ends up in a landfill.

But the beat goes on: it's cheaper than ever to produce and plastics are more convenient than ever. Can we break our addiction? I'm not counting on that happening soon!

NPR story

Pears from Argentina packed in Thailand and consumed in the US

This post by Prof. Matthew Hayek, part of a mini tweet-storm of 6=7, reminds us that while moving fruit around the globe sounds pretty crazy, in fact it's not that bad. Producing pears domestically is expensive in inputs and the climate in Argentina is perfect for them, so it makes sense to package (particularly the ugly, blemished ones) and ship them off in lightweight containers. Growing pears in the US probably uses a lot of agricultural chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides which makes the ecological footprint much larger than producing pears in Argentina.

Why that would happen in Thailand as opposed to Honduras, where cheap labor is also abundant, is probably because it's safer: Honduras is a big shipper for a product with a significantly higher markup. So given global political realities it makes sense!