This Week In Sustainability - Edition 4

Sustainability in the Press

Despite the Trump Administration’s best efforts to quell renewable energy expansion, a new analysis shows that in the US, clean energy jobs rose 3.6% in 2018, outnumbering nonrenewable energy jobs 3 to 1. Take that, climate change deniers!

Bring your s’more supplies, an ongoing fire at a petrochemical storage terminal in Deer Park, Texas has been raging since Sunday. The plume of black smoke closed highways and schools, yet the local area claimed that there was no air pollution hazard. Several storage tanks of gasoline were burned or collapsed in the fire, yet local authorities say that this will have no impact on the availability of gas or gas prices in the area. I’m not sure what logic Deer Park is using to rationalize this catastrophe, but this is definitely a moment where the rest of us can say, “This wouldn’t happen with solar.”

As the weather becomes more intense, entire communities along the Platte and Missouri rivers are underwater. Thanks to the intensity of the Polar Vortex freezing the ground solid, a heavy layer of snow, and then pounding rain - the massive amounts of water had nowhere to go. The destruction is heartbreaking, especially knowing that these unpredictable weather systems are not going away anytime soon,

In better news, a federal judge ruled that an Obama era oil lease failed to adequately take into consideration climate change impact of leasing public land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming. I think Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians says it best, “This is the first court ruling that specifically tears apart the Interior Department’s failure to take into account the climate change of impact on drilling, on a national scale.”

Decades before women gained the vote, there were women getting equal pay, wearing trousers, and working alongside men in areas such as organic chemistry, physics, botany, and horticulture. In 1896, London’s royal botanical gardens at Kew employed women and it caused quite a stir. Get the whole heartwarming story here.

Sustainability Podcasts

Food Heroes Podcast Episode 26: Sean Lenihan The Honest Bison: Honesty and transparency in the meat industry. 

Green Dreamer Podcast Episode 120: Accepting there is no orthodoxy in environmentalism to activate everyone with Dr. John Fraser and Dr. Rupu Gupta.

Parting Thoughts

With spring officially here, a deep house clean is probably on the horizon. Consider DIYing your cleaning products or finding safer alternatives to keep things toxin-free and earth-friendly. I’m lazy and like to wait for my mom to come into town before I tackle a deep clean on the house. Two OCD cleaners are better than one, right?

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