Read the full story from WTTW.
Just in time for summer, Chicagoans have a new way to explore all the outdoor options available to them.
Chicago-based environmental nonprofit Openlands recently launched a “Get Outside Map” that serves as an interactive guide to hundreds of outdoor sites in and around the city, including parks, forest preserves, hiking trails, picnic shelters and more.
Read the full story in Scientific American.
California mandated a switch yesterday to nonpolluting shuttles and buses running short hops at its largest airports.
The California Air Resources Board unanimously passed the policy, the first of its kind in the nation. It requires by 2035 a switch to zero-emission vehicles at 13 airports: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland and Ontario International, along with commuter airports in Orange County, Burbank-Hollywood, Long Beach, Palm Springs, Fresno and Santa Barbara.
It affects vans and buses carrying people to airport parking lots, rental cars and nearby hotels.
Read the full story in Cosmetics Design.
Yesterday, the beauty maker announced its minority stake investment in Carbios, a green chemistry company working to solve environmental sustainability problems in manufacturing. The funds will help the company move its PET recycling technologies closer to industrial scale.
Read the full story at Ubergizmo.
There is a lot of focus and emphasis placed on tech that is sustainable. This is because our resources are finite, meaning that there will eventually come a point in time where a certain resource is no longer available. Plus, we also need to think in the long-run, where our actions today will no doubt have an impact on the generations to come.
Now, AI is without doubt part of our future where we have seen how it can be used in a variety of industries, such as health, where it could be used to detect things a human doctor might miss. However, as beneficial as AI could be, it seems that training AI models might be quite bad for our environment.
This is according to a recent paper published by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where they have found that the process of training an AI model can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is estimated to be about five times the lifetime emissions produced by an average American car, which also includes the process of manufacturing the car itself.
Read the full story in the National Law Review.
On June 19, 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized three separate and distinct rulemakings as part of the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rulemaking package. First, EPA finalized the repeal of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). Second, EPA promulgated the final ACE rule itself, which consists of emission guidelines requiring states to develop and submit to the EPA plans that establish standards of performance for CO2 emissions from certain existing coal-fired electric utility generating units (EGUs) within their jurisdictions. Third, EPA finalized regulations governing implementation of the ACE rule and any future emission guidelines issued under Clean Air Act (CAA) Section 111(d).
EPA originally proposed not only the above actions but also certain revisions to the New Source Review (NSR) Program. However, EPA has opted to finalize the NSR revisions at a later date.
Read the full story in the Southern Illinoisan.
The application is to build a pipeline to pump millions of gallons of mine wastewater into the Big Muddy. The water would be pumped out of mine shafts as it seeps in, and this is necessary to keep miners safe, according to the company’s proposal.
As previously reported in The Southern, the proposal from Williamson Energy was made to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and seeks permission to discharge between 2.5 million and 3.5 million gallons of high-chloride water per day into the river. A public comment period for the proposal ended in November. Residents are now waiting to learn whether the IDNR will grant the company’s request.
Read the full story at The Next Web.
The new feature, called “Changes,” lets you compare two different archives of a given URL. It gives a side-by-side comparison, with changes highlighted in blue (added content) and yellow (deleted content).
Read the full story at e360 Digest.
Global energy use could increase by as much as 58 percent by 2050 as communities and industries use more air conditioning to cope with rising global temperatures, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Communications. This increased energy use will disproportionately affect low-income households, the scientists said, and will also increase greenhouse gas emissions even more, further exacerbating climate change.
Read the full story from Reuters.
Europe’s high levels of food waste are an ethical scandal at a time when hundreds of millions of people around the world are going hungry, the head of the region’s food safety watchdog said on Friday.
Read the full story in Nature.
Companies say they are close to commercializing cheap perovskite films that could disrupt solar power — but are they too optimistic?
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