Read the full story at The Hill.
Richer countries and people are contributing a disproportionate amount to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report released by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) research organization on Tuesday.
According to the WIL’s report, the top 1 percent of carbon emitting countries account for 17 percent of emissions, while the bottom 50 percent of countries account for only about 12 percent.
Read the full story at Kotaku. Learn more about Kpop4Planet here.
The Korea Times reports that the fans are asking for the companies to make concert tours more eco-friendly and to not use plastic for albums and merchandise. On Monday, the “Sustainable K-Entertainment” conference was held at the National Assembly in Seoul.
Read the full story at Recycling Today.
The Solid Waste National Association (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, has released a report analyzing “recycle right” programs, their financial impacts on local governments and their effectiveness. The report, “Encouraging Better Curbside Recycling Behaviors,” follows the Applied Research Foundation’s (ARF) report released in March, “Reducing Contamination in Curbside Recycling Programs,” which addressed curbside recycling contamination.
Read the full story in the Washington Post.
The report reads like the basis for a science-fiction novel.
In one scenario, humanity fights climate change by fertilizing the ocean, boosting the growth of tiny photosynthetic creatures that pull carbon out of the atmosphere. In another, scientists change the chemistry of seawater so it can absorb more planet-warming gases. There is even a proposal for sending electrical currents through the waves, breaking apart molecules and enhancing their ability to take up carbon dioxide.
Read the full story from Leiden University.
Scientists regularly appear in the media. They participate in science cafés, write a popular-science book or visit school classes. In that way, they want to convey their knowledge and enthusiasm to society. But do they succeed? To answer that question, a new website is launched, with a toolbox full of instruments to evaluate the effect of science communication activities.
Read the full story from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University.
To reverse the global decline of coral reefs, a greater understanding of coral diversity is needed. Now, researchers in Japan have developed a tool—a short DNA sequence, called a primer—that can determine the diversity of hard corals on a reef with just a sample of seawater taken from nearby.
The method used eDNA—the DNA of an organism found in its surrounding environment—that was extracted from seawater samples taken from above three different reefs in Okinawa. Analyses of the eDNA using the primer identified 26 genera of coral and found that each reef was made up of its own unique coral composition.
This new tool paves the way for more accurate and accessible coral reef monitoring—a step forward for coral reef conservation and restoration throughout the world
Read the full story from Arizona State University.
Climate change is linked to melting glaciers, hotter deserts, food shortages and threatened water supplies. But social workers are learning it has another effect: how environmental changes create challenges for vulnerable populations.
Concerns about these effects have ushered in a new area of the profession, environmental social work, which has begun to be called “eco-social work” and “green social work.”
Read the full story at Daily Kos.
In partnership with Appalachian Hydro Associates, Berea College has just completed the first college-owned hydropower facility in the US. The facility took over Lock and Dam 12 on the Kentucky River near Ravenna, KY, which had been abandoned since the early 1990s.
Read the full story from GreenBiz.
Bay Area-based All for Reuse is tackling one complex piece of this puzzle, an untapped — yet seemingly obvious — opportunity to apply the basic principles of preserving value and keeping materials at their highest and best use. The two-year-old initiative launched in collaboration between the San Francisco Department of the Environment, Stop Waste and Arup to help developers, owners and renters of the largest portfolio holders in the Bay Area to increase the reuse of commercial building materials.
Read the full story in Chemical & Engineering News.
Communities across the US are desperate to rid their environments of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), especially when these chemicals are in their drinking water. But even when PFAS are successfully filtered out of water, disposing of the extracted material remains a challenge. Now, Congress is starting to examine technologies to destroy these widely used synthetic chemicals…
At a Dec. 7 hearing held jointly by two subcommittees of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, lawmakers learned about one emerging approach, supercritical water oxidation. Battelle, a nonprofit research and development organization that does contract work mainly for the US government, presented its work developing the technology.
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