It Burns

We have no right to be shocked and surprised by any of this. Not when the smart guys have been telling us for decades that this is the kinda shit we can expect.

Yes, we should be moved by the emotional appeal of seeing people's lives disrupted (ie: upended, fucked up completely, snuffed out, whatever - pick one, they're all bad) but we also have to see this as an opportunity to stomp some conservative ass and make the point that Republicans (mostly) are getting people killed because of their foot-dragging at best, and their outright counter-humanity policies at worst.

This is really really bad, you guys.

Satellite pix of Canada on fire.

‘How Could This Happen?’

Canadian Fires Burning Where They Rarely Have Before

Of the more than 400 fires burning in Canada, more than one-third are in Quebec, which has little experience with so many and such large wildfires.

When Liz Gouari was making plans to move from Africa to join her husband in a rural stretch of northern Quebec, he promised her that Canada was a tranquil nation.

But on Wednesday, the couple was among dozens of people sitting in stunned disbelief in an evacuation center after the entire city where they lived was forced to flee from a raging wildfire.

The blaze tore through the forest and bore down on their city, Chibougamau, one of the countless Canadian communities affected by an extraordinary outbreak of forest fires whose smoke has blotted out skies across swaths of North America and forced millions indoors because of hazardous air quality.

Growing up in the Republic of Congo, Ms. Gouari and her husband, Rey Steve Mabiala, said they were familiar with evacuations of all sorts — he had once fled fighting by hiding in a tropical forest — and with how floods and droughts made worse by climate change were causing major displacements on the continent.

“Back home in Africa, there are many climate refugees, but I never thought I would become one in Canada," said Mr. Mabiala, 42, who arrived in Canada in 2018, and was joined last month by Ms. Gouari, 39, after he became a permanent resident and sponsored her admission into the country.

With three months left in Canada’s wildfire season, blazes have already scorched more than 10 times the acres of land burned by this time last year. The size and intensity of the fires are believed to be linked to drought and heat brought on by a changing climate.

Fires are burning in forests in all of Canada’s provinces and territories, except the province of Prince Edward Island and Nunavut, a northern territory that sits above the tree line, where temperatures are too low for trees to survive.

“My wife keeps telling me, ‘But how could this happen? You always promised me that Canada was a peaceful country, but now we’re starting to flee as if we’re back home,’” Mr. Mabiala said, glancing at his wife, who had a blank stare and could only murmur that she was “shocked.”

The outbreak has hit not only the western provinces traditionally prone to wildfires, but also provinces in the east, like Quebec, where it is rare for so many fires to burn simultaneously and whose residents have little experience evacuating from such blazes.

Of the more than 400 fires now burning in Canada, more than one-third are in Quebec, which has already registered its worst wildfire season on record.

Climate Forward There’s an ongoing crisis — and tons of news. Our newsletter keeps you up to date. Get it in your inbox.
“It’s really an exceptional year,” said Josée Poitras, a spokeswoman for Quebec’s wildfire prevention agency.

As even extremely cold regions in Canada become warmer, increasing temperatures and a “vapor-pressure deficit,’’ or a lack of moisture in the air, are making trees drier, said Tanzina Mohsin, a professor of physical and environmental sciences at the University of Toronto.

“We are facing some unprecedented events, including droughts, accelerated fires and heat waves, and there will be more over time, especially forest fires,” Ms. Mohsin said.

The wildfires in Quebec were sparked last week by a single lightning strike near Val-d’Or, a city about 200 miles southwest of Chibougamau, following an unusually dry spring, Ms. Poitras said, adding, “In one day, we got 200 alerts from people reporting that they had seen smoke, and that resulted in more than a hundred fires, which have gradually increased.”

In Chibougamau — a city of 7,500 people about 430 miles north of Montreal by road — city officials issued an evacuation order late Tuesday, only hours after having said that a firewall would contain the encroaching blaze. But with the fires only 15 miles away and picking up speed, residents jumped into vehicles and began heading south.

Many arrived in Roberval, a city about 150 miles southeast of Chibougamau. A drive that usually takes a couple of hours took two to three times longer as a caravan of cars and trailers moved slowly down the highway in the middle of the night.

“I’ve lived in Chibougamau for more than 40 years, and I’ve never experienced a situation like this,” said Francis Côté, 71, who was staying with other evacuees at a sports center in Roberval. “It’s the first time I’ve had to evacuate because of a wildfire.”

It was the first time that all of Chibougamau had to evacuate because of wildfires, though residents in parts of the city had been forced to leave in 2005.

Inside the large sports center where evacuees were sheltering, people sat and slept on cots, with single suitcases next to them. Some had brought along their pets.

The authorities had blocked all roads leading up to Chibougamau and other areas threatened by the wildfires, and it was unclear when residents would be allowed to return or what they would find once they did.

In an odd twist, while smoke from the wildfires was wafting across the East Coast of the United States, there was no smell or visible smoke in Roberval and other areas just south of Chibougamau on Thursday.

A combination of factors, fire officials said, laid the groundwork for the spread of wildfires in the Chibougamau area: freezing rain that weighed down trees and littered the forest floor with broken branches that became tinder; and unusually dry ground because snow melted earlier than usual and there was little rain in the spring.

Built on mining and the logging industry, Chibougamau is one of the few bold names on maps of Quebec’s vast, thinly populated northern regions. For many in Quebec, it is a mysterious place associated with remoteness and extreme cold.

But Chibougamau is also being hit by the effects of global warming. Longtime residents said that the evacuation followed years of change in their community.

Since retiring as a mining worker a decade ago, Mr. Côté has managed an outdoor skating rink in Chibougamau. Fewer months with below freezing temperatures have shortened the skating season, and erratic temperatures have made it more difficult to maintain a clean, smooth ice surface.

“This year, there was a thaw in January,” he said. “It melted, I had to start over, and it took a week to remake the ice.”

“We can really see that it’s global warming that’s impacting us more and more," Mr. Côté added. “Every year, it gets worse.”

When Guy Boisvert, 79, moved to Chibougamau as a child, a white fog blanketed much of the city in winter, as temperatures regularly dropped to minus 45 Fahrenheit. Winters were long, and May brought a lot of showers, making wildfires rare and manageable.

“Sometime we’d see a small wildfire, and it would last a day or two," Mr. Boisvert said.

His wife, Shirley Gallon, 75, who has lived in Chibougamau for 53 years, added, “We never imagined we’d have to evacuate from Chibougamau.”

More recently, because of warming temperatures, the golf season has lengthened in Chibougamau, said Jonathan Mattson, 42, a city councilor and fervent golfer.

A couple years ago, the golf season began starting a full month earlier, in mid-April. Normally, the golf course feels wet.

“But this year, when I walked on the course, it was crispy — very, very dry,’’ Mr. Mattson said.

But perhaps most surprised were newcomers to Chibougamau, like Mr. Mabiala, from the Republic of Congo, who came to work in logging.

Two women from the Philippines, Ruth Cabrera and Anna Huerte, said they had experienced evacuations back home after floods and volcano eruptions.

A familiar dread — of being at the mercy of natural forces beyond their control — returned as the wildfires approached Chibougamau, turning the sky red and yellow.

Ms. Cabrera, 49, who works at a McDonald’s in Chibougamau, and Ms. Huerte, 38, who works in logging, said they did not realize how climate change could upend lives in Canada.

The two women said that their relatives in the Philippines had been astonished to learn about their evacuation.

“They were asking, ‘Oh, is there such a thing in Canada?’ ’’ Ms. Cabrera said.

How to Protect Your Health From Wildfire Smoke

Do masks work?

The best thing to do to prevent breathing in pollutants is to stay indoors. If you have to go outside, put on a mask. But a surgical mask, scarf or bandanna won’t do much to protect you from pollutants. Instead, use a N95 face mask or respirator mask. Cover both your nose and mouth.

How can I keep indoor air clean?

By some estimates, a good air filtration system can cut smoke pollution indoors by about 50 to 80%. If you have central air or an air-conditioning unit, close your windows and switch your system’s filtration settings to recirculate. Portable air purifiers with HEPA filters can work well in smaller spaces. Portable fans and ceiling fans can also help.

Who is most at risk?

All children and adults with respiratory or cardiovascular conditions are among the most vulnerable to toxins in smoke. Older adults and pregnant women are also at higher risk of serious health effects. These people should seek medical assistance if experiencing discomfort or heightened symptoms.

What should I do if I have a headache?

Breathing in wildfire smoke can cause headaches. To ward that off, restrict the amount of time you spend outdoors, and try to optimize the quality of your indoor air. The most effective treatment for headaches can vary from person to person, but over-the-counter medications like Tylenol or Advil can help. Staying hydrated is also critical.

Can I go for a run?

You probably shouldn’t, especially if you suffer from chronic respiratory conditions like asthma. During exercise, we largely breathe through our mouths, which — unlike noses — don’t have a natural filtration system for pollutants. Exercising in a highly polluted environment has been linked to cardiovascular health risks. Smoky conditions can also hinder visibility.

How can I monitor the quality of the air?

Several apps, including AirNow Mobile App, can help you track air quality levels. Home air quality monitors are limited in their abilities and reliability; keep that in mind if you choose to use one.

As The World Burns

Across North America, wildfires are burning more land at a higher intensity, a phenomenon that wildfire experts attribute to climate change. Studies show a clear correlation between the number of acres burned by wildfires and higher temperatures. Heat waves in May in Alberta dried out vegetation, creating conditions that make large wildfires more likely.

NYC

Wash DC

Meanwhile, the "Freedom Caucus" decided their priority is to enact a law that protects gas stoves, and to fuck over Kevin McCarthy because they're pouting about the Debt Ceiling deal he made.

SCOTUS

We can stop trying to fool ourselves about who's running the show - it's the Alito Court now for sure.

John G Roberts has proven to be a pushover in the same way every decent reasonable human becomes a pushover when the plutocratic mob decides it's time to take over.

Not that I think Roberts is all that reasonable - the prick has gone along with some truly shitty decisions, and there's that little thing about Mrs Roberts pulling down a million dollars in "commissions" putting Federalist Society darlings in positions of power - but there have been times he's shown a low spark of humanity.

Will there come a time we sit back and yearn for the good old days when our government was only semi-impotent against the flood of corporatization?

Opinion The Supreme Court just gutted the Clean Water Act. It could be devastating.

Justice Antonin Scalia died more than seven years ago, but the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday shows that this is the “Scalia Court” far more so than when he was alive.

The ruling arrives almost a year after the court’s conservative majority made the worst fears of environmentalists a reality in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, which severely curtailed the ability of the nation’s environmental laws to protect public health and welfare. The Sackett ruling doubled down on that disregard for pollution and public health, and the effect will likely be devastating.

The precise legal issue decided in Sackett concerns the geographic scope of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Congress intended the law to end the practice of the nation’s waterways being used as the unregulated dumping ground for industrial pollution. The effect was transformational: For the first time in the nation’s history, any discharge of pollutants into the nation’s waterways absent a permit was unlawful, making it possible to safely fish and swim waters throughout the country.

Congress was not at all shy about the geographic reach of the Clean Water Act. The statute targeted discharges into “navigable waters,” but Congress also expressly defined that to include all “waters of the United States.” Since the mid-1970s, the courts have uniformly agreed that Congress intended with that expansive definition to extend the law’s protections far beyond traditional navigable waters to include the wetlands, intermittent streams and other tributaries that feed into the nation’s major rivers and lakes.

In a unanimous opinion for the court almost 40 years ago, Justice Byron White explained why. While acknowledging that “on a purely linguistic level, it may appear unreasonable to classify ‘lands’ wet or otherwise as ‘waters,’” the court said “such a simplistic response … does justice neither to the problem faced by the [government] nor to the realities of the problem of water pollution that the Clean Water Act was intended to combat.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s opinion in Sackett, however, embraces the very “simplistic response” that the court rightly criticized in 1985. Relying on a dictionary definition of “waters” and ignoring the Clean Water Act’s purpose, the court’s conservative majority has adopted a radically truncated view of the reach of the law’s restriction on water pollution. Under the court’s new view, pollution requires a permit only if it is discharged into waters that are “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, ‘forming geographic[al] features’ that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams … oceans, rivers, and lakes.’” And “wetlands” are covered only if they are “indistinguishably part” of those narrowly defined covered waters.

This is exactly what Scalia wanted to accomplish in 2006 when the Clean Water Act was last before the court. He managed to cobble together three other votes to gut the law but fell one justice short. Now, with six conservative justices — three of whom are largely modeled after Scalia — Alito was able to accomplish what Scalia never could by securing the necessary fifth vote.

The impact of the majority ruling is potentially enormous. It could lead to the removal of millions of miles of streams and millions of acres of wetlands from the law’s direct protection. Basic protections necessary to ensure clean, healthy water for human consumption and enjoyment will be lost. As highlighted by Justice Elena Kagan’s separate opinion, the court’s opinion “prevents the EPA from keeping our country’s waters clean by regulating adjacent wetlands.”

Nor will the nation’s economy be spared. Myriad businesses rely on clean water for their industrial processes. The fishing, real estate and tourism industries are all highly dependent on the protections that the Clean Water Act has provided over the past half-century.

None of this was compelled by law. Even Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh rejected Alito’s majority view, announcing that he “would stick to the text.” Congress spoke clearly in the Clean Water Act about its ambitions and backed that intent up with deliberately sweeping language to provide the EPA with the discretionary authority it needed to realize those goals. Our nation’s waters are far cleaner as a result. Yet, for the second time in less than a year, an activist Supreme Court has deployed the false label of “separation of powers” to deny the other two branches the legal tools they require to safeguard the public.

Scalia might have been pleased. Our nation should not be.

My question:

Where does Justice Alito think the "wet" in wetlands comes from, if not from the nation's rivers and lakes and streams and oceans?

 C'mon, Sam - What the fuck?

USAmerica, Inc

... is nine kinds of fucked up - in one picture

Shell Deer Park chemical plant on fire 05-05-2023

with

Corporate bullshit slogan on a garbage truck

I don't see how we're gonna survive.

Babies Not Having Babies

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I think my only push-back on this piece by Peggy O'Donnell Heffington is the fact that it's coming from someone at the University Of Chicago, which traditionally, is not exactly a hotbed of progressive thinking on sociological subjects. Color me skeptical.

That said, she's not sounding like the usual conservative dick, trying to tell young people they're overreacting or that liberals are being all squishy or some shit.

She's reporting what she's hearing from the people who're going to decide where we live out our old-age. We should probably listen, and take it to heart.

Opinion Don’t want a baby because of climate fears? You’re not alone.

As a college professor, I’m used to hearing young people’s anxiety and even anger about climate change. One of the most striking trends is the number of students who have told me they feel robbed of the ability to have children, cheated out of parenthood by decades of climate denial and inaction by baby boomers and their own Gen X parents.

My students are not alone. A global survey in 2021 of 10,000 people between the ages of 16 and 25 shows how widespread these sentiments are. Close to 60 percent told researchers they felt “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. More than half feared the security of their family would be threatened in the near future, and nearly 4 in 10 said they were “hesitant to have children.”

That’s an awful lot of people. But many older Americans argue that this is absurd, even morally suspect — from Fox News hosts suggesting that even questioning whether to have children amounts to “civilizational suicide,” to commentators in the New York Times who have acknowledged the reality of climate change but then dismissed concerns about the future of the environment in favor of the hope children offer. In both instances, parenthood becomes a moral referendum, separating those who affirm the value of human life, or the value of American civilization, from those who don’t.

But the decision not to have children in the face of crisis is nothing new. In fact, the impulse can be traced not only to our human ancestors but also beyond the human species.

The anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has observed that mothers of all kinds, human and otherwise, make choices about how many children they will raise and when, based on ecological and historical circumstances. Primates have been seen to abandon babies born in moments of food shortages or environmental distress, the pressure to survive in their given habitat overriding any reproductive instinct or maternal bond.

Today, we tend to talk about reproductive decisions as though they take place in a vacuum, where all options are available to all people, and the choice you make is determined only by your desire: Do you want to have a child? But for centuries, reproductive decisions have been constrained by people’s economic, material and environmental conditions.

For instance, when Mormon settlers moved into Southern Paiute lands in Utah in the 1850s, bringing violence and disease, births in the tribe plummeted, and not just because women who might have borne children were killed. “My people have been unhappy for so long,” a Paiute woman wrote in 1883; after decades of war, death and loss, “they wish to disincrease, rather than multiply.”

People from marginalized communities have long had to weigh their desire for children against the safety and sustainability of the lives they imagined those children would lead. In the face of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings and racism, “Black people of the not-too-distant past trembled for every baby born into that world,” Mary Annaïse Heglar wrote in 2019. “Sound familiar?”

In the spring of 1969, a college graduate named Stephanie Mills made the connection between environmental concerns and reproductive choice explicit, when she delivered a dark commencement speech at a small college in Oakland, Calif. “I am terribly saddened by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is have no children at all,” Mills said. “As an ex-potential parent, I have asked myself what kind of world my children would grow up in. And the answer was, ‘Not very pretty, not very clean. Sad, in fact.’”

Mills gave her speech — and, in the next year, dozens of talks like it — at a portentous moment for environmental activism and contraceptive technology. The Food and Drug Administration had approved the first form of hormonal birth control in 1960, and by the end of the decade, millions of women were relying on the pill to put off having children — or, like Mills, to avoid having them.

This was also just as the American environmental movement was gaining steam. The spring after Mills gave her commencement speech, an estimated 20 million Americans would take part in events for the inaugural Earth Day — a victory, however symbolic, for environmental causes. But onstage in 1969, Mills was far more optimistic about contraception than she was about the promise of environmentalism. Her speech was titled “The Future Is a Cruel Hoax.”

Should you not have kids because of climate change? It’s complicated.

To today’s environmentally minded observers, the fact that young people are considering having fewer children might seem like a good thing. Population is a driver of climate change, they might say, and the carbon footprint of a baby born in the United States is gigantic; having one fewer child cuts emissions far more than giving up airplanes, meat or automobiles.

But that kind of thinking — blaming individuals having babies for societal ills — has been used to fuel population control measures with distinctly authoritarian, racist or eugenicist flavors. It also misses the point. My students aren’t talking about the carbon footprints of babies. They’re talking about grief, about a future that has been lost.

If politicians and policymakers want to encourage young people to become parents — and it seems they very much do — history suggests there’s a better path than the one too many of them are pursuing: revoking our right to reproductive autonomy, making birth control harder to access and abortion a crime.

Instead, they should convince us that climate change is being taken seriously as a threat — that the environment we and our children must live in is in good, capable, rational hands.

We have to make better

short-term decisions,

in order to have

a more positive impact

in the long term.

Because those decisions

don't just determine

how our children will live -

they determine how

our children will die.

Today's Today

Earth Day 2023

MAGA rubes love to bitch about electric cars actually being powered by coal - it's one their favorite things in the whole wide world. So I'm wondering if they'll stick with it, or move on to something else as we try to keep things from getting completely outa hand.

I think most of us have finally begun to grok the part about how they don't give a fuck about reality - they just try to bull their way through, and truth be damned.

My guess is that they'll go after the obvious point that it's likely to make the power companies mad because they have to do stuff they're not used to doing (ie: making their emissions less deadly), while not doing some of the shitty things they've always been able to get away with (ie: externalizing the costs by leaving their mess for communities and local governments have to clean it all up and take care of the people harmed by their shitty behavior).

We'll see.

EPA proposal would nearly eliminate power plant emissions by 2040

A long-awaited climate rule, which is sure to face legal challenges, would push plants that burn fossil fuels to use carbon-capture technology or hydrogen

The Biden administration soon will unveil a proposal to require power plants to nearly eliminate their greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040, a second try to regulate one of the country’s biggest contributors to climate change after the Supreme Court struck down the last attempt, according to three people familiar with the plans.

If implemented, fossil-fuel-burning power plants probably would have to use technology to capture their carbon dioxide emissions from their smokestacks or switch to other fuels to meet the limits set in the rules, according to the three people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that is not yet public. The proposal is still under final analysis at the White House and could change before the Environmental Protection Agency completes and announces it.

The agency has been planning an announcement for the coming days, but final details are in flux, and a formal proposal could be more than a week away, according to several people familiar with the planning. Turning that proposal into a final rule package would be likely to take months more, and, according to two of the people familiar with the details, many of the proposal’s most stringent standards would not take effect until the 2030s, giving industry years to come into compliance gradually.

Although its greenhouse-gas emissions have been declining, the electric-power sector remains the country’s second-largest contributor to climate change, being responsible for a quarter of such emissions nationwide in 2021, according to EPA data. That has long made power plants a top target for climate regulations, and President Biden has previously promised to eliminate their emissions by 2035.

The Supreme Court has loomed over the effort, ruling last year that the EPA during the Obama administration had exceeded its authority by building the first attempt at such regulations around a new system to push power companies to switch fuels across their fleets, and replace coal with cleaner options. The updated rules that Biden has promised have been held up for months in part because the agency has been trying to craft them in accordance with that decision so they might survive a conservative-majority court.

The administration’s plan is to stick with rules that apply within a plant’s fence line, with limits on the amount of what each plant can emit, according to four people familiar with the effort. They will be applied through rules for new gas- and coal-fired plants, and existing coal-fired plants, those people said.

The policy would not mandate any type of technology or fuel, according to the two people familiar with the latest details. But they said the limits it sets would be so stringent that to meet them, fossil-fuel-burning plants most likely would need to use carbon-capture technology or be capable of switching to use hydrogen, which burns without greenhouse-gas emissions.

Some of these details were previously reported by the New York Times.

“EPA cannot comment because the proposals are currently under interagency review,” agency spokeswoman Maria Michalos said in an emailed statement. “But we have been clear from the start that we will use all of our legally-upheld tools, grounded in decades-old bipartisan laws, to address dangerous air pollution and protect the air our children breathe today and for generations to come.”

Sounds Like Life

We'll miss this when it's gone.

Opinion

Why Tiny Ponds and Singing Frogs Matter So Much

NASHVILLE — I wish you could hear what it sounds like to sleep near an ephemeral pond in early springtime on the Cumberland Plateau, especially on a rainy night. As darkness begins to fall, the small frogs called spring peepers begin to sing. At first their song is the sonic equivalent of the way popcorn pops: each peep a single sound, each sound buffered on either side by silence.

Peep.

Peep.

Peep.

Peep.

Then: Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep.

Finally it’s PeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeepPeep.

As darkness gathers, new songs gather, too. Soon the whole pond is singing, and the night becomes an amphitheater for the chorus. Scriiiiiitch, scriiiiiitch, scriiiiiitch, sing the upland chorus frogs. Oooeeeeeeeeeee, oooeeeeeeeeeee, sing the American toads. Sometimes you can hear the rattly keeuk, keeuk, keeuk of the wood frogs, too, and the raspy aaa-aaa-aaa-aaa of the gray tree frogs.

These miniature wetlands on the stony plateau also draw an array of salamanders. In any given ephemeral pond, there will almost certainly be spotted salamanders and probably marbled salamanders and mole salamanders, too. The deeper into the Southern Appalachians you go, the more salamanders there are. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is known as the Salamander Capital of the World.

Ephemeral ponds — which are also called vernal pools — first appear in winter as water collects in depressions and shallow basins in the forest. Snowmelt and spring rains, not running water, keep the ponds filled, and cold air slows the rate of evaporation. Under these conditions, any low-lying area in the woods that will hold water will also become a magnet for amphibians.

Because vernal pools are not fed by creeks or streams, they dry up in the heat of summer and therefore cannot support fish, which feed on amphibian eggs and larvae. This absence of fish, along with the pond’s abundant insect and crustacean life and the manifold hiding places in a body of water dense with sticks and rotting leaves, makes an ephemeral pond the ideal nursery for tadpoles and larval salamanders.

Annual but temporary wetlands can be found all over the country at this time of year, but the ponds I am most familiar with are the ones that lie on the Cumberland Plateau surrounding the college town of Sewanee. Like nearly all ephemeral ponds, too many lie on private land and are vulnerable to the possibility of development.

Amphibians are indicator species. Because their porous skin is particularly sensitive to changes in the environment, the health of an ecosystem’s amphibian population is one way to measure the health of the ecosystem itself. When frogs and toads and salamanders thrive, everybody thrives.

But amphibian populations are declining by roughly 4 percent every year, according to the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, a national nonprofit. “The loss of habitat is by far the biggest threat to amphibian survival and the No. 1 cause of population decline,” JJ Apodaca, the executive director of the conservancy, told me last week.

It doesn’t take much to disrupt a wetland habitat, especially one as small as a vernal pond: “Just a slight change in the landscape can eliminate an ephemeral pool and eliminate reproduction possibilities for thousands of amphibians,” Dr. Apodaca said. Even a simple drainage ditch can be devastating: “As soon as you put in a ditch, it drains the water table and dries out the land.”

Dr. Apodaca calls the disappearance of ephemeral ponds “a secret loss,” especially when the surrounding forest is still largely intact. “We see trees, we see habitat somewhere, and we think it’s all good. What we don’t see is that it has lost its vernal pools and ponds, this important component of the landscape.” Once the pond is gone, the amphibians and insects, and the creatures that feed on amphibians and insects, are also gone.

A shiny black salamander viewed up close sliding crawling through a bed of moss.
Three-lined salamanders traverse a patch of moss.

As crucial as these micro wetlands are to the immense biodiversity of the Southern Appalachians, ephemeral ponds enjoy no federal protections. Under current interpretations of the Clean Water Act, it’s their isolation from other waterways — the very quality that makes them so critical to amphibian reproduction — that puts them in danger. And that’s just one example of why the conservancy concentrates much of its efforts on habitat conservation and restoration.

The news from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week is absorbing all the headlines, and that’s as it should be. When the planet’s premier climate scientists concur that we have less than 10 years to hold off a cataclysm, we desperately need to hear the urgency in their words.

We are facing nothing less than an existential crisis, and in that context the potential loss of a few amphibians in a few unprotected wetlands might not be the greatest source of grief in the world. These little vernal pools might seem expendable, hardly more than a storybook enchantment for children still enthralled to tales of princesses whose only reason to kiss a frog is to turn it back into a prince.

But the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are twinned and intertwined. The earth is a magnificent, breathing organism, and every species contributes to its survival. We might not always know exactly how they do that, but we know they exist as part of a balance that is slipping away. When we work to preserve frogs and salamanders — when we work to preserve any species — we are working to preserve life on earth as we know it.

I have grown deeply attached to a particular spring-singing pond on a bluff outside Sewanee, a disappearing pond so full of nighttime song that I always long to replicate it once I’m back home in Nashville. Such a thing is not possible, of course. I don’t live in a forest. Too many of my neighbors drench their yards in the lawn-care poisons that make rainwater runoff lethal for amphibians. I have not seen a toad in this yard for decades, and every year the tree frogs singing in the trees grow fewer and fewer.

Last spring I bought a container meant to provide water for livestock. Surrounding it, I installed the kinds of marginal plants that grow on the edges of wetlands — cardinal flower and creeping jenny and blue flag iris. To the tank itself I added anacharis and hornwort and duckweed to oxygenate the water and provide hiding places for tadpoles. And then I waited. Not a single tree frog came to lay her eggs there.

I remain hopeful anyway. After a year in the elements, my stock-tank pond now offers a soft layer of mud at the bottom and plenty of lovely, rotting leaves. It’s as tiny as the tiniest ephemeral pond, and there is nary a tadpole-eating fish within its shallows. This year I will add another stock-tank pond nearby, and next year another, and the year after that another still. One day, I believe, the tree frogs will find me and the nursery I built for them.

Meantime, the spring nights have grown warm and rainy, and I listen in the darkness for the love song of tree frogs outside my window. In the mornings, I look for eggs.

Green-ish

Even Cynical Mike hates thinking there may be a push on the part of the Dirty Fuels Cartel to dabble a little in "greener technology in the interest of the greater good" so they can then sit back and point at its shortcomings (or outright failure), and claim, "Well, gosh, we tried to do it your way, but you end up bitchin' about that too - I guess we'll have to go back to the old way..."

Just remember - nature bats last

Huge Phillips 66 biofuels project will test the industry’s green promises

RODEO, California, March 21 (Reuters) - In the oldest refining town in the American West, Phillips 66 (PSX.N) is promising a greener future as it moves to halt crude-oil processing and build a massive renewable diesel plant, leading a global trend.

That plan, announced in 2020, was initially welcomed by residents weary from a history of pollution and toxic leaks. But some have grown skeptical as the project’s details cast doubt on the environmental benefits of revamping the 127-year-old complex on 1,100 acres in Rodeo, California.

The company’s initial claim that it would slash greenhouse gasses by half doesn’t match the project’s environmental impact report, published by county regulators, which shows a 1% reduction, according to a Reuters calculation of emissions data in the report. What’s more, refining of petroleum byproducts may continue as a side project.

And renewable-diesel production will require a surge in marine and train traffic, increasing emissions and spill risk. The conversion also requires boosting natural-gas usage to produce hydrogen required to make the biofuel.

These dynamics and other variables raise questions about Phillips 66’s marketing of renewable diesel as a green fuel and make it impossible to tell whether and how much the refinery overhaul will reduce community pollution, three independent environmental experts told Reuters.

The project’s environmental impact will be a test case for similar facilities worldwide. Several dozen new U.S. renewable diesel plants are planned, according to energy consultancy Stratas Advisors. Most will be conversions of oil refineries. Production capacity could triple, to 6 billion gallons, by 2026, Stratas says. Europe and Asia are seeing similar trends.

Phillips 66 representatives say the project, dubbed Rodeo Renewed, will significantly cut certain regulated pollutants and will lead to large cuts in greenhouse gasses when the biofuel is burned in vehicles. The refinery’s general manager, Jolie Rhinehart, said renewable diesel is the cleanest-burning option for use in transporting goods by truck.

“Heavy-haul trucking is a vital aspect to our way of life in this country and in this world,” she said. “And renewable diesel is the lowest-emission way to fuel that energy that we need to keep our trucks moving.”

Rhinehart added that emissions directly from the plant, affecting local residents, would be “significantly reduced” by the project.

Some Rodeo residents worry the overhaul could become another chapter in a long story of local pollution. Sitting across the bay from San Francisco’s glittering cityscape, Rodeo is a poster child for post-industrial problems. In addition to the Phillips 66 plant, the area has hosted a second oil refinery, a lead smelter and a dynamite factory. Vacant storefronts and rusted-out cars blight the boulevard leading to a beach too toxic for swimming. The community, in unincorporated Contra Costa County, has much higher concentrations of illness, poverty and brownfield cleanup sites than most others in California.

“It could have been the jewel of the county,” resident Janet Callaghan said of Rodeo. But over the years, industrial pollution has “turned Rodeo into the armpit of Contra Costa.”

Maureen Brennan, a member of Rodeo’s air-monitoring committee, called the biofuels project an experiment with uncertain environmental benefits. After initially cheering the plan, she said: “I started to realize that we’re actually the global guinea pigs here.”

CONFLICTING POLLUTION ESTIMATES

Renewable diesel is made from feedstocks such as soybean oil, beef tallow or used cooking oil. It can be used in heavy-duty trucks with no engine modifications. The Phillips 66 plant may also produce other biofuels.

The county board of supervisors in May approved the project, which is expected to start operations in early 2024.

Phillips 66 spokesperson Bernardo Fallas said the difference in the company and county greenhouse-gas estimates stems mostly from the fact that county regulators included pollution projections for five fossil-fuel refinery processing units for which the company intends to keep operating permits. The company excluded those units, which Fallas said would not be operating when the biofuels project starts. Phillips 66, he said, has not yet decided whether and how the fossil-fuels units would operate in the future.

Fallas confirmed, however, that Phillip 66 is considering a plan to process slurry oil, a heavy residual crude oil byproduct, using the refinery’s coker. Fallas said the slurry-oil processing would produce materials needed for electric-vehicle batteries.

The county said in a statement that slurry-oil processing “would not be consistent” with the refinery revamp it approved in May, and would require additional regulatory review.

The county’s environmental impact report estimated greenhouse gasses by assuming emissions from the coker and the four other units would remain unchanged, an approach the study called conservative. It also included emissions from the expected increase in natural-gas use and from projected increases in transportation to the plant.

The claim has also made its way into filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including an annual proxy statement and a handful of 8-K disclosures.

The company’s disclosures to the SEC, however, dropped the 50% claim after the draft environmental impact report was published in October 2021. The company said it updated its messaging to “ensure consistency” with the report.

While Phillips 66 and the county made strikingly different projections of the biofuels plant’s greenhouse-gas pollution, they agreed that the project would have a climate benefit extending beyond the facility’s local emissions. They said biofuels produce less greenhouse gasses than traditional gasoline or diesel when burned in vehicles. That reduces emissions over the total “lifecycle” of the fuel, which includes all aspects of exploration, production and consumption. Considering only local pollution from the plant, the county said, underestimates the potential greenhouse-gas emissions reductions by “orders of magnitude.”

Some researchers, however, contest that claim. They argue that carbon emissions from clearing and tilling land to farm biofuels feedstocks, such as corn or soybeans, offset any reductions in tailpipe emissions.

TRUCKS, TRAINS REPLACE A PIPELINE

Phillips 66 projects the conversion will reduce emissions of certain federally regulated air pollutants, such as benzene, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. Sulfur oxide emissions are expected to drop 80% from 2019 levels and larger particulate matter pollution by 20%, Fallas said, citing the environmental impact report.

Three independent environmental experts said it’s likely some of those emissions - along with those of greenhouse gasses - will fall simply because of a reduction in overall capacity after the transformation. As an oil refinery, the plant processed nearly 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude – far more than the projected capacity of 80,000 bpd of biofuels feedstocks.

The plant’s emissions after conversion are difficult to predict, the environmental experts said, because of the lack of research on pollution from large-scale renewable-diesel processing and because the company has not publicly outlined what feedstocks it will use. The Phillips 66 operation could result in reductions of some pollutants, when compared to oil refining, but increases in others, said Mark Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University and director of the school's Atmosphere/Energy Program.

“I expect to see no improvement whatsoever,” Jacobson said.

“You'll just get a different set of chemicals coming out of the (biofuels) refineries compared with the traditional refineries of diesel and gasoline.”

In addition, the surge in transportation related to biofuels processing could worsen local pollution, said Ron Sahu, an independent air emissions consultant.

Phillips 66 plans to shut a 200-mile oil pipeline to the plant, leading to a doubling of tanker vessels and a tripling of rail-car arrivals, according to the environmental impact report. Truck traffic will fall overall but sharply rise to part of the refining complex closest to the most densely populated part of Rodeo, bringing residents there in contact with more particulate-matter and other transportation pollution.

The project will also cause a projected 29% increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the plant that will be using more natural gas to produce hydrogen for biofuel processing, according to the report.

Janet Pygeorge, 87, lives in view of the refinery’s smokestacks. She remembers a 1994 chemical leak at the refinery, then under different ownership, that sickened tens of thousands of people. A Phillips 66 predecessor company bought the refinery in 2001. Since then, the plant has had seven “major accidents,” including fires and toxic releases, through 2018, according to the latest available county data.

That history makes the prospect of continuing fossil-fuel operations unsettling to residents who lived through it, Pygeorge said. "It just doesn't sound safe to me.”

Fixing A Problem

It seems pretty important for companies to take criticism to heart, look for and recognize problems, and then push themselves (and in turn push each other) to find solutions - to face the objections head-on.

I guess the Wind Energy sector can handle that, while the only thing the Dirty Fuels Cartel ever comes up with is better PR, flimflam, and fuckery to get people off their backs.

Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades

The study ran for nine years at Norway's Smøla wind farm.

Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.

Wind power is surging right now, with more than 60GW of new generating capacity added worldwide in 2019. As long as you put the turbines in the right spot, wind power is reliably cheaper than burning fossil fuels. And most people would prefer to live next to a wind farm than any other kind of power plant—even solar.

Not everyone is a fan of wind turbines, however, because of their impact on local populations of flying fauna like birds and bats. Politicians with axes to grind against renewable energy say that we should continue to mine coal and extract oil because of the avian death toll, and US President Donald Trump has called wind turbines "bird graveyard[s]." Estimates from the US Fish and Wildlife Service calculated that approximately 300,000 birds were killed by wind turbines in 2015 (which is probably two orders of magnitude fewer than die as a result of colliding with electrical power lines each year), and bird deaths from turbines are trending down as the industry moves to larger turbine blades that move more slowly.

Wind power prices now lower than the cost of natural gas

Bird deaths caused by wind power may be overstated then, but they do still occur. Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.

At the Smøla wind farm, regular checks of four particular wind turbines—each 70m tall with three 40m-long blades—found six white-tailed eagle carcasses between 2006 and 2013. In total, the four turbines killed 18 birds that flew into the blades over those six years, along with five willow ptarmigans that are known to collide with the turbine towers rather than the blades. (Another four turbines selected as a control group were responsible for seven bird deaths, excluding willow ptarmigans, over the same timeframe.)

And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines - a 71.9% reduction in the annual fatality rate.

Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.

Climate Change

2022 Tied for Fifth Warmest Year on Record

Earth’s average surface temperature in 2022 tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend, global temperatures in 2022 were 0.89 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951–1980), according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

The past nine years have been the warmest years since modern record keeping began in 1880. This means Earth in 2022 was about 1.11°C (2°F) warmer than the late 19th century average.

The map above depicts global temperature anomalies in 2022. It does not show absolute temperatures; instead, it shows how much warmer or cooler each region of Earth was compared to the average from 1951 to 1980. The bar chart below shows 2022 in context with temperature anomalies since 1880. The values represent surface temperatures averaged over the entire globe for the year.

“The reason for the warming trend is that human activities continue to pump enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the long-term planetary impacts will also continue,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS, NASA’s leading center for climate modeling.

Human-driven greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded following a short-lived dip in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, NASA scientists, as well as international scientists, determined carbon dioxide emissions were the highest on record in 2022. NASA also identified some super-emitters of methane—another powerful greenhouse gas—using the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument that launched to the International Space Station last year.

The Arctic region continues to experience the strongest warming trends—close to four times the global average—according to GISS research presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as well as a separate study.

Communities around the world are experiencing impacts scientists see as connected to the warming atmosphere and ocean. Climate change has intensified rainfall and tropical storms, deepened the severity of droughts, and increased the impact of storm surges. Last year brought torrential monsoon rains that devastated Pakistan and a persistent megadrought in the U.S. Southwest. In September, Hurricane Ian became one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to strike the continental U.S.

NASA’s global temperature analysis is drawn from data collected by weather stations and Antarctic research stations, as well as instruments mounted on ships and ocean buoys. NASA scientists analyze these measurements to account for uncertainties in the data and to maintain consistent methods for calculating global average surface temperature differences for every year. These ground-based measurements of surface temperature are consistent with satellite data collected since 2002 by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder on NASA’s Aqua satellite and with other estimates.

NASA uses the period from 1951–1980 as a baseline to understand how global temperatures change over time. That baseline includes climate patterns such as La Niña and El Niño, as well as unusually hot or cold years due to other factors, ensuring it encompasses natural variations in Earth’s temperature.

Many factors can affect the average temperature in any given year. For example, 2022 was one of the warmest on record despite a third consecutive year of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean. NASA scientists estimate that La Niña’s cooling influence may have lowered global temperatures slightly (about 0.06°C or 0.11°F) from what the average would have been under more typical ocean conditions.

A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that the global surface temperature for 2022 was the sixth highest since 1880. NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis and have a different baseline period (1901–2000) and methodology. Although rankings for specific years can differ slightly between the records, they are in broad agreement and both reflect ongoing long-term warming.

BTW, today I learned:

for every one of the 8 billion humans on this planet, there are 21,000 pieces of plastic strewn about the environment.

East Palestine Ohio

On a cold night earlier this month, the sound of a train speeding through the center of town — typical background noise in the Ohio village near the Pennsylvania border — was replaced by a screeching and thundering halt, and roaring flames. The derailment of a Norfolk Southern train has upended lives, prompted recriminations from Republican and Democratic politicians and exposed some of the risks posed by transporting hazardous chemicals across the country. Here is what is known about what led to that moment, and what came after:

Feb. 3: Minutes before derailment

A security camera captured the Norfolk Southern train near Salem, Ohio, 20 miles east of the site where it later derailed. What appears to be sparks and flames can be seen underneath one of the cars. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has since said that the derailment appears to have been caused by a mechanical problem on one car, saying a wheel bearing on that car appeared to have overheated.

Feb. 3: The accident

Feb. 6: The controlled release

Two days after the crash, officials monitoring the situation said there was serious concern one of the cars would explode in a “catastrophic” blast, according to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), as the temperature in the car rose.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of about 1,500 residents and initiated a controlled release of vinyl chloride from five train cars to avert an explosion, sending a toxic plume into the air.

Measuring the impact

In the following days, fears about a broader environmental disaster in East Palestine and neighboring areas began to mount.

Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz said that about 3,500 fish died as local waterways including the Ohio River became contaminated. State officials said they had not collected any evidence of animals other than fish suffering from the spill, though residents have shared suspicions about chickens, rabbits, foxes and other animals falling ill.

Low levels of a chemical called butyl acrylate have been detected at multiple sampling sites along the Ohio River. State EPA officials have said that the concentrations detected pose no risk for drinking water supplies in the area.

Meanwhile, a pungent odor remains in the air in East Palestine, and some residents have complained of rashes, runny eyes and other symptoms.

Once cleanup of the derailment site is completed, state and federal environmental officials said a wider effort will begin to uncover and address any contamination that may have spread into soil and groundwater. Anne Vogel, director of the Ohio EPA, said that process will take “as long as it takes.”

There are concerns the pollution could be pervasive, and questions about how widely contamination may have spread through the plume of smoke during the controlled chemical release. For now, authorities say the air is safe to breathe and the municipal water supply safe to drink.

Fouling The Nest

East Palestine OH - Feb 2023

Notice the responders walking around in the clear - no PPE except vests and hard hats.

Maybe it's OK - they don't need suits and masks.

Maybe the owners and their insurance company are downplaying the whole thing now so they can claim ignorance somewhere down the road when the lawsuits start.

Seems a little odd that the local poison center wasn't consulted - or we just didn't hear about it - maybe it was and they just didn't have much to say (?)  Unlikely.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a full list of toxic chemicals that were released when a cargo train derailed near the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania on February 3.

At about 8:55 p.m. ET, a Norfolk Southern train of around 150 cars derailed near the Ohio town of East Palestine, 20 of those cars carrying hazardous materials.

The derailment caused a huge fire and, fearing a massive explosion that would release noxious gases and shrapnel into the surrounding area, emergency responders intentionally breached five cars to let out the chemicals inside.

The chemicals were diverted into a trench and burnt off. Officials warned, however, that it would send toxic gases phosgene—used during World War I—and hydrogen chloride into the atmosphere.

Environmental regulators have been monitoring the air and drinking water around the site of the derailment, and have so far said both remain unaffected by the spill.

Residents of East Palestine were allowed to return to their homes after chemicals observed in the atmosphere following the controlled release were found to be at safe levels. Some have complained of headaches and nausea, according to the Associated Press, and pets have died in suspected cases of chemical exposure.

In a February 10 letter sent by Jason El-Zein, an emergency response manager at the EPA, to Matt Gernand, deputy general counsel for the Norfolk Southern Railway Company, a list of toxic chemicals were identified as having been found to have contaminated air, soil or water surrounding the crash site. They were:

• Vinyl chloride: a colorless gas that is used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics and is highly flammable and decomposes to make toxic fumes. According to the National Library of Medicine, it is also carcinogenic and can cause other health issues.
• Butyl acrylate: a clear liquid that is used for making paints, sealants and adhesives. It is flammable and can cause skin, eye and respiratory irritation.
• Ethylhexyl acrylate: a colorless liquid used to make paints and plastics. It can cause skin and respiratory irritation and, under moderate heat, can produce hazardous vapor.
• Ethylene glycol monobutyl: a colorless liquid used as a solvent for paint and inks, as well as some dry cleaning solutions. It is classed as acutely toxic, able to cause serious or permanent injury, and highly flammable. Vapors can irritate the eyes and nose, and ingestion can cause headaches and vomiting.

El-Zein wrote that the EPA "has spent, or is considering spending, public funds to investigate and control releases of hazardous substances or potential releases of hazardous substances" and had determined that the rail company "may be responsible under [the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act] for clean-up of the site or costs EPA has incurred in cleaning up the site."

When asked to comment, a Norfolk Southern spokesperson told Newsweek that the company had received the EPA's letter "and we have confirmed to them that we have and will continue to perform or finance environmental monitoring and remediation.

"Our hazmat team was in East Palestine within an hour of the incident, and the response continues today in close coordination with the Ohio and U.S. EPA," as well as other agencies, they added.

The company is also facing a lawsuit, filed by two Pennsylvania residents on Thursday, calling for the rail operator to pay for medical screenings for anyone within a 30-mile radius of the crash site alongside damages. The rail operator has declined to comment on the lawsuit. The EPA is already assisting health screenings offered by Norfolk Southern.

Officials expressed calm when lifting evacuation orders, with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine describing air quality readings as "basically similar to what they would have expected prior to the train wreck" during a press conference.

Kirk Kollar of the Ohio EPA said the levels of toxic chemicals observed in nearby waterways "were immediately toxic to fish," and that spilt material had leaked into Sulphur Run. Lesley Run, Little Beaver Creek and the Ohio River were being monitored.

The U.S. EPA said on Friday that Norfolk Southern contractors had installed a dam and a water bypass at Sulphur Run to prevent further contamination, and had also stopped the remaining spilled chemicals entering the stream.

The EPA is working with the Ohio EPA to investigate soil contamination at the derailment site.

Love Your Mama

These everyday items endanger the environment. Here’s how to handle them.

How to safely dispose of paint, batteries, light bulbs and other potentially risky products cluttering up your cabinets.

They light our rooms, color our walls, clean our surfaces and power our electronics. Products that can be potentially hazardous to humans and animals are lurking in basements, stored under sinks and cloistered in closets — often because people simply don’t know how to get rid of them.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it’s imperative to keep products that contain harmful chemicals or unsafe metals out of the municipal waste stream where they can be a danger to the community and the environment. For many items, proper disposal is as easy as dropping them off at your city or county transfer station. If that’s not convenient, keep in mind that batteries and lightbulbs can often be recycled at stores that sell them. Earth911 is a comprehensive resource for finding a place to recycle more than 350 materials at more than 100,000 locations in North America.

EPA environmental protection specialist Kathy Lett stresses that people also can make less-toxic purchases from the start. “Consumers can minimize waste on the front end,” she says, pointing to the EPA’s Safer Choice labeling program that identifies Earth-friendlier cleaning and other household products from companies including Seventh Generation and ECOS. But if you’ve already got a stockpile of potentially risky items cluttering your cabinets, here’s how to dispose of them the right way.

1 Lightbulbs

We dig compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) — which come in many shapes but often are spiraled — because they’re energy efficient. But CFLs contain small amounts of mercury, which is toxic to humans and pets and can be released into the environment when the bulbs break. (Same goes for tube-shaped fluorescent bulbs.) In short, the EPA doesn’t want these to end up in the landfill, so keep them out of your trash.

Home Depot, Lowe’s and Ikea accept CFLs, which are then recycled. Lowe’s also accepts traditional fluorescent bulbs, and Ikea accepts LEDs, which contain recyclable microchips and electrical components. These bulbs also can be taken to your local transfer station; check first to see what is accepted where you live.

The EPA recommends holding on to the packaging when you screw in a new bulb so you know when it burns out whether it contains mercury. As for older-style incandescent bulbs, you can toss those into your regular household trash, guilt-free.

2 Cleaners, paint and other liquids

Take a look at the liquids in your house: cleaning sprays, degreasers, rust removers, disinfectants, bug sprays, toilet bowl cleaners, stain removers and more. If you see a warning on the outside that says the contents are toxic, flammable or need to be handled with care or kept away from children, they’re not meant for our wastewater system. That means don’t pour them down any drains (including storm water drains) or flush them down the toilet. Same goes for paint, paint thinner, fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides — even if they aren’t liquid.

“Hazardous household materials can pollute local streams and water bodies, contaminate groundwater and harm fish and wildlife, and also our pets,” says American Rivers spokeswoman Amy Souers Kober. “Disposing of these substances properly is so important to protecting our own health, our drinking water and the health of our environment.” To get rid of these products safely, you’ll have to take them to your local transfer station, searchable at Earth911. You can also search there for places to drop off old motor oil.

3 Batteries

The “freedom to go unplugged” comes with the responsibility to do the right thing with batteries, says Linda Gabor, executive vice president of external relations for Call2Recycle, a consumer battery recycling program with thousands of collection sites nationwide. “It might take an extra step, but at the end of the day we want batteries to stay out of the trash and home recycling, where they can start fires.”

Batteries also contain valuable materials that should be conserved, according to the EPA. Call2Recycle is funded by more than 200 manufactures, including Dyson, Samsung and LG, to ensure that batteries are collected at retail sites and shipped, sorted and recycled, down to their plastic casing.

When storing and transporting your batteries, keep them in a cool place, in a nonmetal container. Place a bit of electrical or duct tape over the electrical contacts or place them in individual bags to prevent fires when the batteries are jostled, advises the EPA — this is most important with lithium or lithium-ion batteries. If a battery looks damaged — showing swelling, corrosion or other defects — it is more likely to be dangerous. For guidance on how to handle a damaged battery, call Call2Recycle customer service at 1-877-723-1297.

Though there are different ways to safely dispose of different types of batteries, Gabor stresses that Call2Recycle aims to simplify the process: “We really don’t want consumers to feel like they have to be battery sorters. Leave all of that sorting to us.”

Nonetheless, here’s a quick primer on how to handle a few common types.

• Single-use and rechargeable batteries: For most of these batteries, you can search Call2Recycle to find a retailer that accepts them for recycling — Home Depot and Lowe’s accept all rechargeable batteries — or check with your hazardous waste center. Some rechargeable batteries aren’t removable from their devices; in that case, bring the entire device to the drop-off location. Single-use alkaline batteries used to contain mercury, but today they’re safe to throw in your household trash.
• E-bike batteries are accepted at many bike stores. Search Call2Recycle, which has partnered with more than 1,600 retail locations for drop-off.
• Vehicle batteries, including those that power cars, motorcycles, boats and golf carts, are traditionally lead-acid, which the EPA reports may contain up to 18 pounds of lead and about one gallon of corrosive lead-contaminated sulfuric acid. According to Recycle Nation, these materials can be toxic to humans and pets and will poison groundwater if they leak from their plastic cases, so they’re banned from landfills and incinerators in every state. Handle these batteries carefully and return them to the stores where you bought them or drop them off at a transfer station. If you have a plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle, refer to the manufacturer’s instructions or contact the dealership. None of these batteries should end up in the trash or curbside recycling.

4 A few surprises

According to the EPA, old-style thermostats (the kind with a lever to adjust the temperature) have a quantity of mercury inside equal to the amount in more than 100 CFL lightbulbs. Same goes for glass thermometers in which you can see the mercury, barometers and some antique pendulum clocks. If you’re upgrading to digital models, drop the old ones at your local transfer station or search for a collection spot at Earth911.

Finally, guess what seemingly benign, ubiquitous item is too dangerous for household trash? Hand sanitizer. The Food and Drug Administration regulates alcohol-based hand sanitizers, which are flammable, as an over-the-counter drug and considers them hazardous waste when disposed of. So, the EPA encourages people to take unused hand sanitizer to hazardous waste collection drop-off locations.

How to safely dispose of old medications