Installation of the Pollinator Garden
​April 22, 2023!

Eliot’s Creation Care Team leads a demonstration in Newton Centre to protest Bank of America’s major lending to fossil fuel companies — joining forces with Third Act, which was protesting also three other major banks, also lending largest amounts to fossil fuels, JPMorgan Chase, CitiBank and Wells Fargo.

Take me to Eliot's Climate Blog!

Ways to Reduce Climate Change
by Ginny Robinson
for Eliot’s Creation Care Team

Regenerative Gardening

World on Thin Ice IPCC 2023 Globe.2023-03.20
 
Regenerative Gardening
 
Master gardener Bonnie Clancy sums it up this way:
 
“Do not till;
  Do not kill
  Keep roots in the ground all year round
  Cover your soil with mulch and plants;
  Do this always and your gardens will dance.
  Learn diversity, biodiversity; let that be your university
  And don’t throw anything away;
  Recycle, recycle every day.”

What hurricanes do to above ground communities, tillage does to the below ground soil community. Agricultural soils in the Midwest are losing 2 millimeters of soil per year mostly due to tillage. Instead of tilling, just dig a hole big enough to put in seeds or plants.
 
How pests and weeds are handled if they aren’t killed? There are many more beneficial Insect species than harmful ones. Of the more than 100,000 insect species found in the U.S., less than 1% feed on plants in a harmful way. (2) Many of the “good bugs” feed on the pests and keep them in check; for example, Ladybug larva can consume 500 aphids a day.(1)  So you can choose plants that beneficial insects like. Beneficial insects also pollinate crops and break down organic matter, as well as aid in making medicines, textiles, honey and wax.(2)  Intercropping (as opposed to planting all the same plant in rows) also helps prevent infestation by insect pests.
 
Environmentally, a weed is a plant whose job is to cover soil and keep it from drying out, eroding, and losing carbon and nitrogen. Rather than using herbicides, use sheet mulching to deter weeds, protect the soil, insulate and hold moisture and eventually add organic matter. How to sheet mulch: 1) wet and aerate the soil, 2) cover it with wet paper or cardboard, overlapping 6 inches, 3) wet again thoroughly, 4) add 7 inches of mulch, 5) add compost.
 
What is meant by “keep roots in the ground all year round?” Many gardeners cover their plots with a tarp if they are away in the summer. What are alternatives? Plant a cover crop such as rye grass, sweet potato, cowpeas, clover, sun hemp or buckwheat. Different plants give and take different combinations of nutrients; monocropping depletes the soil and attracts insect pests. Instead of plowing the cover crops under when ready to plant for the new season, chop and drop. That keeps roots in the ground and uses the cover crop as compost.(1)
 
Compost works even better to add nutrients and microbes to the soil in combination with biochar. Biochar, a charcoal-like highly stable soil amendment product, is one of our best tools in the fight against climate change since it sequesters 2 times its own weight of carbon. And you only need a 3 lb. bag for a 200 square foot plot per year. Moreover, less fertilizer is needed with biochar because it releases the nutrients to the plants more slowly. Biochar also increases water infiltration, aeration, retention and decreases compaction; improves root structure and growth; reduces soil acidity and leaching of nitrogen into groundwater; and can lock heavy metals from soils preventing them from negatively affecting plants and therefore human health.(3)

1. Bonnie Clancy, Regenerative Gardening Techniques in Beds and Backyards, January 9, 2023
2. https://sfyl.ifas.ufl.edu/sarasota/gardening-and-landscaping/horticulture-commercial/integrated-pest-management/beneficial-insects.
3. Dave Dutro, Biochar #101

Time to Consider an Electric Vehicle (EV)?
Lookin' Good
And more improvements coming up!

 

An Israeli company has announced new batteries for electric cars that can be recharged in just five minutes. Cost and range, sometime barriers to the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), no longer matter, according to Daron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot, the company that made the breakthrough.
 
By using silicone instead of graphite in developing the new Store-Dot batteries, overheating of batteries would no longer be an issue. Dozens of other companies are also developing fast-charging batteries, using varying compounds and with varying battery life. Another issue concerning people has been the mileage range an EV has before needing a charge. If charging stations can offer five-minute charges and that charge can take you 100 miles, the anxiety about limitations on driving distance will no longer exist.

By 2025, StoreDot aims to deliver 100 miles of distance with a five-minute charge, and is now working with BP to deliver it. President Biden has big plans for putting in new charging stations, more high-powered than those used today, promoting trade-ins, and switching to electric cars for the entire Federal fleet.

Are EVs are better for the environment given the high emissions rate for EV car production and dismantling. Let's look a little closer.

• The production of any car takes energy.

For each gasoline engine car, the manufacturing phase creates 10.5 tons of CO2 (tCO2). The making of an EV car creates 13 tCO2 in comparison. The making of the battery itself (from rare earth elements like lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite – obtained through mining, a very polluting activity) accounts for 3.2 tCO2 emissions of the total. The EV is more polluting at this stage than a gas powered vehicle.

• Charging the battery of an EV takes energy.

Though it matters what the energy source is for charging, driving an EV does emit less CO2 than a gas-powered vehicle – it’s just a question of how much less. An example can be seen in comparing two countries with different energy sources: in Australia, where about 21% of energy is from renewable sources, the amount of CO2 emissions from an EV is about 170g/km. In New Zealand, where much more of its energy is from renewable sources (84%), the emissions from the generation of electricity used to charge an EV battery are only 25g/km. Both are lower numbers than the 251g/km of CO2 emissions from a gasoline engine vehicle. Here the EV scores well.

• Recycling Phase.

The emissions from dismantling and recycling materials from a gas-powered vehicle produces 1.8 tCO2. Dismantling an EV produces 2.4 tCO2 – the emissions from recycling just the battery of an EV is almost .7 tCO2. Here we see again the higher emissions from an EV.

Putting all this data together, the math tells us that gas engine vehicles indeed emit more CO2 over the lifetime of the car than EVs. In Australia the carbon footprint of an EV vs gas engine vehicle is 273g/km vs 333g/km (an 18% improvement over gas engine vehicles). In NZ the EV carbon footprint is just 128g/km (a 62% improvement over gas engine vehicles) due to the high percentage of renewable energy used to charge the battery.
 
Efficiencies in manufacturing, battery technology (like the one described in the opening paragraph), and more readily available renewable energy sources for recharging will continue to make EVs an even smarter choice. But for now, it seems merely a smart choice.
 
For more information on electric vehicles, see Marcia@GreenNewton.org or Google, and to learn much more about the new batteries, see The Guardian, Jan 19, 2021, Electric Batteries With 5-Minute Charging Times, by Damian Carrington for Environmental Education and https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762, by Md Arif Hasan and Ralph Brougham Chapman, Victoria University, Wellington, 10/15/19.
 
--Ginny and Natasha

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Subject: Public Citizen’s Climate Change Work

The Ralph Nader organization, Public Citizen, is working to incentivize investment in clean energy and disincentivize investment in dirty energy by forcing polluters to account for the cost of climate change and the impacts of their pollution. This is also true for insurance coverage — increase the liability that companies have for their pollution. They believe that financial regulators already have this power given the risk overinvestment poses to the financial system as a whole.

To support the important work being done by Public Citizen on their effort to change the major insurance company, AIG, you can sign this petition:

HTTPS://publiccitizen.salsalabs.org/aigpetition/index.html

To read Public Citizen's Climate Roadmap for U.S. Financial Regulation click here.