If you care about the planet, please make sure you sit down before you start reading this post about ExxonMobil.
So.
The CEO of ExxonMobil just said this in an interview: "We’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets in terms of what we need, as a society, to start reducing emissions."
Who's the most influential voice on climate change? Who's to blame for inaction on climate change?
According to the CEO of ExxonMobil, it's environmental activists.
No, really:
"Frankly, society, and the activist—the dominant voice in this discussion—has tried to exclude the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies."
Oh, and the CEO of ExxonMobil also apparently thinks consumers are to blame for climate inaction:
"Today we have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that."
Gets better.
He thinks unnamed 'people who generate emissions' should pay for it. (Rather than, say, major transnational oil companies.)
"People who are generating the emissions need to be aware of [it] and pay the price. That’s ultimately how you solve the problem."
So, remind me again. Who knew about climate change before most of the public?
"Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue... This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation."
And just who, exactly, stood in the way reducing emissions all these years?
"ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents...
"The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil."
Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres
A lot of the emphasis on reducing microplastics has focussed on things like plastic bags, clothing, and food packaging.
But there's a growing body of research that shows one of the biggest culprits by far is car tyres.
It's increasingly clear that we simply cannot solve the issue of microplastics in the environment while still using tyres — even with electric-powered cars.
"Tyre wear stands out as a major source of microplastic pollution. Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year – with even higher rates observed in developed nations.
"It is estimated that between 8% and 40% of these particles find their way into surface waters such as the sea, rivers and lakes through runoff from road surfaces, wastewater discharge or even through airborne transport.
"However, tyre wear microplastics have been largely overlooked as a microplastic pollutant. Their dark colour makes them difficult to detect, so these particles can’t be identified using the traditional spectroscopy methods used to identify other more colourful plastic polymers."
"Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.
"“Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”"
"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."
I'm somcak, a #librarian currently in #Connecticut. I have 2 mini #dachshunds and 2 #cats. I enjoy all sorts of music, yes, even death metal on occasion! :bugcat_wiggle:
I've been on Mastodon since October, and this is my 3rd server. I finally found the folks I want to hang with!!
I use content warnings for all sorts of stuff, just trying to be considerate! I always make sure there's #AltText and #CamelCase for my own posts as well as those I boost. #Accessibility matters.
Oh no! Look at all these Old Montréal businesses not generating any profit because of the streets being closed for cars. Utterly devastating move by the city to prevent people from accessing these businesses by having nowhere to park. How dare they doom the economy like this?
For those unfamiliar with it, Lemmy is basically a federated version of Reddit, distributed across multiple servers like Mastodon. (For anyone who wants to delve further, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, and aussie.zone are three popular Lemmy instances.)
From Mastodon, you can follow any Lemmy group by following its handle, exactly the same way that you would follow a Mastodon account. Any new posts to that group will then begin appearing in your Mastodon feed.
Even better, if you start a thread on Mastodon, you can also post it to a relevant Lemmy group just by including its handle in your post. (Please note this only seems to work with the first post of a thread.)
What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.
Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.
How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?
A recent post on Twitter by Govanhill Go! reminded me of the concept of desire lines. These are unofficial paths, like the one on the right in this photo, worn into the landscape by people who would rather use them than the official routes (like the one on the left). They're generally short-cuts and often indicate a failure by urban planners to properly understand and account for people's desires as they move through their environment.
Sometimes I mention "my" garden, but really it's a #CommunityGarden I share with about 20 other people.
A few years ago, this small lot had an old house that was in very bad shape. It was sold and the buyer intended to build a new one as an investment rental. But for some reason the construction was delayed and it was left as an empty lot after the sale and demolition.
Some neighbors got together and approached the owner, asking if they could turn the lot into a community garden. They made fences and beds out of recycled material like pallets and decking. They planted fruit vines and trees for everyone to share. The local food bank agreed to pay the water bill.
10 or so years later, here we are! Every year we don't know if this will be the last one, the owner will finally need to start building. It could end at any minute.
I wish that cities would plot more gardens or that it was easier to establish them on private property. I love guerilla gardening but it's hard to grow vegetables that way in this climate (you have to water them in summer) and you miss out on the community part.
I think the ideal housing pattern is small apartment buildings (4-20 units, up to 3 floors tall) #missingmiddle with shared gardens. This maximizes the useful space and minimizes wasted space for everyone. You could do this retroactively by converting parking lots into gardens and allowing residential infill to densify neighborhoods. #urbanplanning#urbanism
In some cities the waitlist for community gardens is years long. That's an absolute travesty. How much more value do gardens give people and cities than endless expanse of lawn and pavement? #FoodNotLawns#gardening
Finding out there's a not insignificant amount of people think that a #15MinuteCity means creating little isolated island prisons is a whole new level of human idiocy that I wasn't expecting to ruin my day today.
Alright fuckers listen up. 15 minute cities are simply a city designed around the basic fucking principles of #urbanplanning and having actual walkable streets so that wherever you are in the city, or wherever your neighborhood is, you have all the basics necessities you need to go about your day within a 15 minute trip. This isn't isolated to singular neighborhoods or "zones". It's an interconnected network accross the entire city, in any place you are, in the city as a whole.
This isn't some new agenda, or just about #ClimateChange or the #environment, it's about designing our cities around human needs and #Community. It's how we used to have our cities before cars took over. If you need to go further, or prefer to go further, you can easily do so by #walking#publictransit or #biking. It's just going to take longer than 15 minutes. That's it. Shocking I know.
Why are people like this? Just take the train you fuckwits.
Looks like the Boring Company's Las Vegas tunnels are going about as well as you'd expect from an Elon project...
"The muck pooling in the tunnel at the north end of the Las Vegas Strip had the consistency of a milkshake and, in some places, sat at least two feet deep. ... At first, it merely felt damp. But in addition to the water, sand and silt—the natural byproducts of any dig—the workers understood that it was full of chemicals known as accelerants.
"The accelerants cure the grout that seals the tunnel’s concrete supports, helping the grout set properly and protecting the work against cracks and other deterioration. They also seriously burn exposed human skin. At the Encore dig site, such burns became almost routine, workers there told Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs. According to the investigation, at least one employee took a direct hit to the face. In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”"
Why #nighttime#heat can be so dangerous and why it’s getting worse
On average, nights are warming faster than days in most of the United States, a national climate assessment found.
By Rachel Ramirez, CNN, Jun 30, 2023
"Summers are getting hotter than ever, shattering all-time high temperature records, straining the energy grid and damaging critical infrastructure.
"#HeatWaves also are coming to include another increasingly dangerous element: overnight temperatures that don’t cool down enough to offer sufficient reprieve from stifling heat, particularly for people without access to #AirConditioning.
“'Most people don’t realize that hot nighttime temperatures have been outpacing daytime temperature increases across most populated regions worldwide in recent decades,' Columbia University’s Data Science Institute postdoctoral research scientist Kelton Minor told CNN.
“'We think it’s because as the days grow warmer, there is more moisture in the air that traps the heat,' the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health’s executive director, Lisa Patel, told CNN. 'During the day, that moisture reflects the heat, but at night, it traps the heat in.'
#Increasing nighttime heat is even more common in #cities because of the #UrbanHeatIsland effect, in which #metro areas are significantly hotter than their surroundings.
"Places with a lot of #asphalt, #concrete, buildings and #freeways absorb more of the sun’s heat than areas with ample #parks, #rivers and #tree-lined streets. At night, when temperatures are supposed to cool down, the retained heat is released back into the air, said University of Washington climate and health expert Kristie Ebi.
"Areas with a lot of #GreenSpace – with grass and trees that reflect sunlight and create shade – are cooler on summer’s hottest days, she said.
“'Many cities put together #CoolingShelters, but people have to know where they are, how to get to them and what hours they operate,' Ebi told CNN, noting city officials must rethink #UrbanPlanning to consider #ClimateChange."
The Designer Who’s Trying to Transform Your City Into a Sponge
"If engineers can slow the flow of that water and allow it to soak into the Earth instead of running away—using rain gardens, spreading grounds, permeable pavers, and urban wetlands—that simultaneously reduces flooding and refills underlying aquifers. That’ll be increasingly critical as the planet warms and droughts intensify: Sponge cities aim to bank water for a rainy day"
We're looking for a Transportation Researcher with a passion for sustainable and equitable transportation strategies and a background in planning, engineering, or a related field. Applications due May 5. https://ssti.us/join-our-team/
Climate resilience: Has the time come to start demanding lighter-coloured streets in hotter climates?
At this stage, the challenge with climate change is not just preventing it from happening by cutting emissions. We also need to make our cities resilient to the climate change we've already locked in.
That's where lighter coloured paving for streets, rather than dark asphalt, can help:
"Sebastian Pfautsch doesn't hesitate when asked what he would change first to cool Australian cities in summer.
"And it's not what you might expect. It's not the seemingly endless expanse of black roofs, soaking up the sun beneath a shimmering haze.
"It's the roads. About a third of any outer suburb is thermally dense black asphalt that can reach 75 degrees Celsius, according to Professor Pfautsch, an expert on urban heat at the University of Western Sydney.
...
"Lighter-coloured roads may make intuitive sense, like wearing a white shirt on a hot day, but how effectively do they reduce surface and ambient air temperature?
"In 2020, two separate cool roads trials in Sydney and Adelaide set out to conclusively answer these questions.
"The Sydney trial, which took place at about 10 sites in the Western Sydney suburbs of Blacktown, Campbelltown and Parramatta, recorded an average surface temperature reduction of 5.6C and 2C for day and night respectively.
"For context, tree shade reduced the surface temperatures of roads by 16C."
White people invented the suburbs specifically to get away from ni-, I mean, "urban thugs," and we're all continuing the (literally) pay the stupid, stupid price.
On #ClimateChange and the #UrbanHeatIsland effect in developing countries blindly following the American style of "development", personal stories from people trying to cope with these both climate and architecturally magnified heatwaves.
Mixed land uses are associated with greater social cohesion, according to a new study. Without diverse land uses, dense places can have the opposite effect. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2023.104903
Yesterday on Facebook I was grousing about how people deliberately misrepresent the concept of the 15 minute neighboorhood, and a FB friend claimed the 15 minute neighbourhood would mean no access for ambulance and fire trucks. I wished it had just been some random yahoo. It's sad to see people you know taken in by such BS. #urbanplanning#toronto
Urban Details — a community celebrating everything that cities do right, from tiny Easter eggs or interesting street art pieces to city-encompassing infrastructure projects or unusual public spaces
Check out the pinned post for a general guide to the community that includes lots of relevant examples....
Silicon Valley elites revealed as buyers of $800m of land to build utopian city (www.theguardian.com)
Group Flannery Associates, backed by prominent investors, quietly buy 55,000 acres of farmland in northern California