Ten, twenty, thirty years ago, today’s headlines were the predictions of fringe extremists.

And yet, they’ve come true. 

Conversations about how to avoid what’s coming aren’t important any longer. What was coming is here, and the proof is all around us. 

2021 is shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record, causing unprecedented heat waves in parts of the world unprepared for them. But it isn’t just the heat that has people panicking…

It’s what the heat changes. 

All of the systems we have in place are dependent on conditions remaining stagnant. Weather, financial, social – we can’t falter or we fall.

In case the headlines from the last month missed your inbox, here are some of the more horrifying stories that indicate our planet is trapped in the cycle of our endless demands.

The Arctic Is Sweltering

Temperatures in Siberia climbed to 118ºF this past week – an almost unthinkable level of heat.

Though not quite as high as the highest ever recorded temperature in Siberia (which happened last year), it’s only May. 

Because of the rapid rate of ice thawing and the persistent heat wave, methane trapped in the ice is being released into the atmosphere. This compounding effect – gas released by a heat wave causing additional heat waves – doesn’t show signs of stopping. 

Power Lines and Crucial Infrastructure Are Melting

In the Pacific Northwest, where temperatures are reliably in the 70s and 80s, temps have exceeded 100º in the past week or so. 

Not only are streetcar services suspended in Portland due to high temperatures melting power cables, but citizens all across the region are losing power – 9,000 in Spokane, Washington alone.

Rolling blackouts have been instituted to avoid overtaxing the power grid. 

Roads are buckling as the heat melts asphalt. 

Buildings Are Collapsing

The beachside condo that collapsed in South Florida? 

Experts believe that the collapse was due to the rise of the sea level directly underneath the foundation of those beachside condos.

In the ‘90s, USA Today reported that the building was sinking at a rate of 2 millimeters per year. Fast forward 30 years, and we may not have to think too hard about what the surrounding conditions of the horrifying crash were.

Miami faces the worst risk of any coastal city in the world, per a recent report. 

Alaska is Experiencing Ice Quakes

Because of the heat wave terrorizing Alaska, the state is reporting “ice quakes” – seismic activity triggered by glaciers melting too fast. 

Ice melting, refreezing, and expanding enough to cause quakes is rare for Alaska… but likely more common moving forward.

25 miles off of Juneau, the magnitude of the ice quake was 2.7. 

Fireworks Are Banned Due to Dry Heat

Just in time for America’s favorite firework holiday, many places across the country are banning their usage – including Oregon. 

Fireworks were the cause of the Sky Fire in California recently as well. Because of the dearth of rainfall and the record dry heat, 100 fire scientists signed a letter asking that fourth of July celebrants don’t express their joy through fireworks. 

Detroit’s Streets Became a River

Last week, Detroit experienced a storm which flooded the city with 7 inches of rainfall in only a few hours. 

It’s estimated that more than 1,000 cars had to be abandoned in the highway flooding as they had no other choice.

When the weather gets warmer, the water cycle changes. Basically, more water is evaporating because of the extreme heat, which means heavier rainfalls are the logical end. 

Hydropower Plants in Danger as Reservoirs Drain

One reservoir in particular, Lake Oroville in California (its second largest), announced it would be forced to shut down the connected hydropower plant for the first time ever.

Due to intense dry heat and an unrelenting drought, the water levels in the reservoir simply cannot sustain the plant, which can power up to 800,000 homes when operating at its highest capacity.

Unfortunately, we can’t change weather patterns once they’re already happening.

We can’t, for example, reroute Detroit’s rain and give it to California.

We are capable of changing the climate, and thus changing weather patterns.

That’s why we are where we are.

No more time can be wasted trying to prove that we can and will heat the earth – the earth is already heated.

The climate crisis is here.

The post Climate Chaos Has Arrived – This Is What it Looks Like appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Will it be solar power? After all, the sun is the source of all power for all living things. Harnessing its rays doesn’t reduce the availability of rays to be harnessed, and we’ve definitely got a while left with our favorite life-giving star.

What about wind? Wind occurs naturally, and plenty of studies are showing that the more wind turbines we build, the cheaper it gets to store and use energy derived from wind. For coastal towns especially, this type of energy makes a lot of sense.

Maybe eventually we’ll land on hydroelectricity, or geothermal energy, or biomass energy, or any of the many brilliant ways this generation of thinkers has come up with to replace fossil fuels.

But you see, renewable energy isn’t only a concern for the environment.

It’s also a huge concern for ourselves.

Human beings are designed to not have to think about our energy.

Societal developments like stimulants, caffeine, energy drinks, drugs, or other sources of external energy have appeared relatively recently on the world stage.

And oftentimes, their rise to popularity tends to coincide with other major events – the agricultural revolution, mass migration and colonization, the industrial revolution, slave trade, etc. 

Why is that?

It’s simple: With every “advancement” of humanity, we’ve changed our habits, even just a little bit. We introduce new foods, new pesticides, new work schedules, new air quality, new forms to fill out, new germs, new rules, new bacteria.

We’ve been evolving for a long time – the oldest dated homosapien remains are about 300,000 years old.

More or less, our bodies are the same.

But we’ve added so much to our environments and changed how we eat and drink and move and live. 

We don’t eat food from out of the ground anymore. We’re so far removed from that process that the preservatives used to keep the food “safe” to eat from the time it’s grown or killed to the time we eat it have to be listed as another factor in our evolving chemical make-up.

What was once a self-sustaining system of energy now has to contend with unnatural additions to our bodies.

On top of the external changes to the physical world we inhabit, altering what we absorb and consume, we’ve added much more to our plates than we used to have to deal with.

We know cavemen and early farmers certainly didn’t have to stress about health insurance providers and deductibles and car payments and repairs and bus schedules and homeowner’s associations and the rising cost of rent.

Humans three hundred years ago didn’t have to deal with any of that either.

Granted, they certainly had problems of their own – stress has always been a factor in human life, from the Romans and their wars to famines in African cities to tidal waves in Japan and so on.

We’ve got built-in mechanisms for dealing with stress – thank your adrenal glands for giving you adrenaline and cortisol when you need it.

The difference is, we’re not built to deal with stress all the time. 

We’re messing with our hormone production by calling for constant engagement, forcing downtime to become a time for side hustles and productivity, filling our waking hours with extracurriculars and activities, disconnecting from the art of meditation and movement in favor of bursts of activity at the gym followed by extended sedentary periods…

You get the idea.

This isn’t normal. 

And we can all tell something is wrong.

Our internal energy systems are meant to be renewable. We have a method for obtaining nutrition from food, absorbing and properly distributing those nutrients, storing and transferring and using energy, and winding down when it’s time to rest.

But we’ve tried to change our natures and control the means of production through outside sources that don’t jive with the way we’re supposed to operate. 

And just like we’re ravaging the Earth and its atmosphere by digging for oil and burning dirty fuel, we’re ravaging our internal turbines. 

Renewable energy exists within us – but we don’t know enough about how it works to identify where a breakdown is happening. 

Energy isn’t just the will to get out of bed in the morning. Energy affects our bodies’ abilities to fight off diseases, run our brains efficiently, create memories, repair traumatic neural pathways, enjoy a healthy sex life, and pursue our dreams.

Without it, we’re nothing but exhausted.

Which is why my friend and fellow natural-healing filmmaker, Nick Polizzi, and I developed this brand-new docu-series, Exhausted! 

In nine episodes – cut down from thousands of hours of interviews with the best medical minds in the functional, ancient, and integrative healing space – we take you through your entire body’s journey to create energy.

It debuts today at 9 p.m. Eastern, and we’re releasing it at no cost to you. 

We got ourselves into this mess…

And the only true way out is to know what doesn’t work, what’s hurting us more, and why. 

Click here to make sure you get the email to tune in, and we’ll take the first step to returning to renewable internal energy together. 

The post The Battle for Renewable Energy Starts Much Smaller Than We Think appeared first on The Urban Monk.

To start with, you’d probably want to approach the International Criminal Court (ICC) which oversees the four categories of international crime…

Genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression. 

One of the prerequisites across the board for each of those crimes is human harm. To successfully convict a person or government, you must be able to prove that their actions fell under one of those four categories and directly resulted in the harm of individuals.

At the moment, ecocide isn’t recognized by the United Nations. The Oxford Languages dictionary defines it as…

The destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action.

The natural environment could mean human beings…

But the groups fighting for ecocide to be coded officially as crime would expand “natural environment” to include ecosystems as well as other living species. 

What if we shifted the way we thought about natural disasters and tragedies? What if we named them what they are – crimes – and thus stopped passively exonerating the corporations responsible? 

Incredibly rare storms becoming predictable didn’t just happen. Record-breaking temperatures in the Pacific Northwest aren’t an accident. Rising sea levels in coastal towns all over the country – and world – aren’t a fluke. 

However, the fight to codify ecocide has been raging long since the evidence of climate change was this well-documented.

Ecocide Through the Ages

50 years ago in Washington D.C., the biologist and bioethicist Arthur Galston used the word “ecocide” at the 1970 Conference on War and National Responsibility. The context of this first recorded usage was an attempt to ban it internationally. 

Two years later, the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme predicted we’d be here. He made a speech at the 1972 U.N. Conference on the Human Environment wherein he warned that global industrialization would become insupportable for ecosystems everywhere.

In the ‘80s, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights commissioned the Whitaker Report to investigate methods of genocide prevention. 

The report asked them to consider “adverse alterations, often irreparable, to the environment – for example through nuclear explosions, chemical weapons, serious pollution and acid rain, or destruction of the rain forest – which threaten the existence of entire populations, whether deliberately or with criminal negligence.”

In fact, when the ICC came into effect as a body in 1998, ecocide almost made the list of the four international crime categories on the Rome Statute – the document to be referenced when making an accusation of crimes.

No dice, though. 

Things have sped up quite a bit since then, however. 

And this most recent attempt to formally recognize ecocide as a punishable crime by the globe’s largest governing body looks like it may actually stick.

Who Do We Have to Thank?

In 2017, the Stop Ecocide Foundation decided to champion the cause. 

The first step in getting ecocide recognized as an international crime is to propose and agree upon a definition. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide has spent the last six months working closely with organizations, including the Stop Ecocide Foundation, to wind up the strongest punch it can to prepare for the annual meeting in December.

The body presented its definition in the form of a draft recently:

For the purpose of this statute, “ecocide” means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.

A glossary of sorts is printed below this 165-word proposal, defining the words “wanton,” “severe,” “widespread,” “long-term,” and “environment.”

Most striking is that “environment” refers to the earth, its biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere, as well as outer space.

Phew. 

No getting away with anything here.

What Happens Next?

This isn’t a linear process, exactly. Bureaucracy never is. 

First, a member country of the ICC has to submit the proposal. There are 123 countries in the club – the U.S, China, and India are notably not.

At the annual assembly in December, a majority of those 123 countries must vote on the proposal. 

Then, everyone gets to fight about the wording. Once the wording is agreed upon, 2/3s of the voting countries have to vote in favor. 

That vote must be ratified, and then a year later, the new rule comes into effect… but only in countries that ratified the vote. 

However, if you’re a citizen of a country that didn’t ratify the vote, but you commit ecocide crimes elsewhere, you can still be held accountable.

The details get fuzzier and hazier the more you learn, but the twelve lawyers making up the proposal panel feel more confident than anyone has in years that this proposal will not only be heard, but instituted.

We’ll be watching come December. 

The post How to Create a Legal Precedent for Prosecuting Ecocide appeared first on The Urban Monk.

It had an advantage. The world had barely any idea about climate change as a concept.

By 1981, the company switched tactics, (while continuing to research climate change), claiming instead that Exxon didn’t need to change their practices and that enough was already being done to correct the issue. And the reason is pretty clear: It realized that the more the world learned, the lower the company’s bottom line would sink if the world moved away from oil. 

And it got out in front of the research, funding campaigns to deny climate change before the real science laid a foundation.

They came up with a pretty decent plan – cast doubt on the science.

In 1986, the Vice President of Public Affairs at Mobil even had this to say:

”Your objective is to wrap yourself in the good phrases while sticking your opponents with the bad ones.”

By the 2000s, when climate activists had more or less cracked the foundation Exxon’s marketing had laid, the company had a new campaign. It borrowed from traditions of grand industries that had already faced and conquered the turning tide of public opinion – think tobacco and firearm…

They placed the responsibility for climate change reversal onto the shoulders of the consumer. 

And it worked beautifully.

“Energy-saving consumers can make a real difference,” read their 2007 marketing statement. Of course, a few years earlier, BP had implemented the carbon footprint calculator, paving the way for Exxon’s about-face.

Turning Up the Heat on Investors

Climate activism has gotten too powerful to control. The internet, the global evidence of warming climates (tidal waves, hurricanes, melting ice caps, etc.), the publishing of the Harvard research associate report proving Exxon’s knowledge and culpability, the pandemic…

All have converged to create a climate that is, at last, inhospitable to Big Oil

Investors also won’t have anywhere to go if the Earth becomes uninhabitable, after all.

So much has happened in the past year…

And recently, an unlikely savior stepped forward to demand ExxonMobil stop greenwashing and put its money where its mouth is.

An investment firm, Engine No. 1, considers itself a sustainable hedge fund intent on driving long-term value without planet and people casualties.

And at ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting, the hedge fund accomplished what no other activist investor had done yet.

It unseated at least two directors from ExxonMobil’s board. 

To understand how the folks at Engine No. 1 were even able to get this far, it’s important to note that after decades and decades of complete domination… ExxonMobil is weakening. Eight years ago, it was the world’s most powerful company.

Since then? It lost $200 billion in market capitalization (price of shares multiplied by number of shares.)

Last summer, after 92 years on the Dow Jones index, it was removed – a harbinger of doom for the rest of Big Oil. The company posted a loss of $22 billion in 2020, its first ever loss on record. 

Although its finances have stabilized somewhat in 2021, its practices haven’t changed enough to pacify the climate activists who are increasingly gaining clout in the investing space.

Especially when compared to its siblings – BP, Royal Dutch Shell (which recently lost a major court case in which it was ordered to cut its 2019 emissions 45% by 2030), Total, and others. 

So why did other investors get behind Engine No. 1?

Hit Them Right in the Money

The world is going to make an energy transition. The gears are turning, whether or not ExxonMobil gets on board.

And they have decidedly not gotten on board, instead doubling down oil and focusing on carbon capture – despite the International Energy Agency advising that we need to stop drilling for new oil immediately. 

Because of these policies, major advisory institutions like Glass Lewis have speculated that ExxonMobil’s value to shareholders – what’s really in the way of the company committing to a complete transition – is going to plummet. 

Engine No. 1 presented four new candidates to replace existing board members, and two have so far won approval.

The so-called Big Three in asset management – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – will likely have the final say. 

But even the fact that Engine No. 1, which owns only 0.02% of ExxonMobil shares, was able to flip two seats (with the support of major investors) is enormous.

ExxonMobil may not be able to maneuver its way out of accountability any longer.

And the power generated by small, organized, financially-backed investment groups proves this battle can be won.

The post Banking On Financial Powers to Reverse Climate Change? The Tides are Shifting… appeared first on The Urban Monk.

By composting. 

We even went through a list of all the things you can compost so that you don’t end up soiling your whole pile.

Composting can accomplish many things, and has long been heralded by homesteaders as one of the most important steps in achieving self-reliance. It takes the farm-to-table movement one leap further…

Using the products of organic waste to help foment the creation of new organic materials for consumption eliminates the risk of herbicides and pesticides, reduces your own carbon footprint, saves you money at the grocery store and the plant nursery, and prevents your scraps from rotting in a landfill, giving off noxious gas.

But the process isn’t as simple as tossing all of your once-living trash into a bin and letting it roast in the sun, eventually yielding dark, fluffy fertilizer.

This is a delicate dance done by the deliberate.

The first step is to understand what’s happening so that you can set it up right. 

What Happens in Composting

First, refer to the list in our previous article about organic waste that you can compost. 

Essentially, know that you’ll need organic waste, soil, water, and air in order to compost successfully.

Here’s what happens… 

The microbes and microorganisms in the soil start to eat away at the organic carbon-rich matter in the waste, breaking it down to its parts. In order for the microorganisms to do that, they need access to oxygen so that the process of aerobic respiration can do the work. The reason you need water is so that the microorganisms can multiply. 

So we know why we need what we need.

Here’s how you achieve it…

Location

Composting can be stinky.

So it’s best if your compost pile can be downwind from your house – not so far away that it’s a chore to get to it, but not so close that you can smell it through an open window (or so that your neighbors can smell it.)

You also want to make sure that the sun isn’t baking down onto it – some sunlight is good, certainly, but you don’t want to dry out your compost pile. It’s meant to stay moist.

Same goes for wind – wind is okay, but too much will blow your compost pile around!

Structure

What are you going to compost in?

Well, the truth is, you can use just about anything! An old trash bin, the bare earth (known as passive composting), an out-of-use fire pit, chicken wire, or a wooden box.

It can be super complicated – like building a three-tiered system by which composting materials at different stages of decomposition are relocated to different tiers – or very simple – just turning over your compost regularly in one big pot.

You can buy one online, build one yourself, or use a big container you have on hand!

Layering

When you’ve got your composting materials ready, it’s important to layer them in methodically, instead of dumping it all in at once.

An ideal arrangement could look like this:

1. Bottom layer: Sticks, wood chips, twigs
2. Next layer: Green and dried leaves
3. Next layer: Grass clippings
4. Next layer: Straw or hay
5. Next layer: Kitchen scraps
6. Final layer: Brown leaves

In between each layer, grab a spray bottle filled with water and spritz liberally, not to soak, but to moisten. Toss soil into each layer as well! 

Another helpful guideline to follow while you’re layering is alternating carbon-rich materials with nitrogen-rich materials. 

Carbon-rich: cardboard, twigs, bread, sawdust, dried leaves, wood clippings, etc.

Nitrogen-rich: kitchen scraps, grass clippings, garden clippings, etc.

Carbon-rich materials let the air and water flow through the pile so that everything can break down at the same rate.

And once you’ve got your pile going, turn it every day!

You can use a stick, a shovel, spade, hoe, whatever you’ve got at your disposal.

But the more you turn it, the more you’re making sure that every component of your compost is getting equal access to the microorganisms in the soil, the water in the nitrogen-rich materials, and the oxygen in the air.

In hot weather?

You’ll probably have your materials completely composted in 2-3 months.

In cold, it could be 6.

If it smells rotten, it’s likely not decomposing. Check your layering! Check your location. Check your water content. Rearrange. Start over!

In the end, you’ll know you’re done by the look (fluffy and dark) and smell… it should be musky, woody, earthy… 

And then? Add it to your garden, to potted plants in your home, to the soil in your yard… Donate it to your community garden or save it to use, and start all over. 

The post The Delicate Science of Composting appeared first on The Urban Monk.

We saw it with masks, Boba for tea, toilet paper, bicycles…

And gas, oil, and coal.

Two of the biggest problems facing our commitment to green energy – whether you support the Green New Deal in its current presentation or not – have been how to manage enormous industrial travel, and what to do about the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on transforming energy the world doesn’t want anymore. 

Those jobs have worsened in their guarantees, and the people who work them have given their lives and bodies in service of our energy. 

They can’t be left behind.

And any system we adopt moving forward which leaves people behind will end in a wider wealth gap and more devastation for communities that have already suffered immensely.

So in the last several weeks, a few important things have happened which point to a reconciliation of values and commitment to doing good work together in the future.

The first is that the largest miner’s union in the U.S., the United Mine Workers of America, agreed to support President Biden’s plan to begin an energy transition away from fossil fuels, promising jobs in clean energy to former fossil fuel energy workers.

Let’s tease apart the details.

Coal About-Faces

There’s a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan in the works, and it’s pretty ambitious.

Framed as “The American Jobs Plan” ostensibly seeks to switch the track the country was on before the pandemic. As the plan itself states,

“Our roads, bridges, and water systems are crumbling. Our electric grid is vulnerable to catastrophic outages. Too many lack access to affordable, high-speed Internet and to quality housing. The past year has… erod[ed] more than 30 years of progress in women’s labor force participation. It has unmasked the fragility of our caregiving infrastructure. And, our nation is falling behind its biggest competitors on research and development (R&D), manufacturing, and training.”

But we won’t get too far into the weeds on all of the details of this plan. What’s important right now is the feature it borrowed from the Green New Deal: justice, training, and equitable transition for energy workers into the clean energy economy.

Congress is currently debating the bill… and as that’s happening, Senator Manchin, from West Virginia, endorsed it and stood with the miner’s union in supporting their demands.

Essentially, the union wants coal workers:

• Get significant tax incentives for building clean energy infrastructure
• Be preferred when hiring green energy workers, especially as they’re dislocated during the transition
• Receive full funding for programs that will plug old oil and gas wells and clean mines
• And continue to receive funding for carbon capturing.

All seem like demands that will be possible to meet.

This is a contentious conversation, but not because America has never experienced a national transitioning. 

On the contrary, nearly every generation during the last 250 years has seen an enormous transition in which all sectors have had to bend and reshape themselves. 

The United Mine Workers of America recognizes that, and wants this transition to be equitable.

But that’s not all that’s been happening.

The Virtual Climate Summit

More than 40 heads of state and leaders in the business world met a couple of weeks ago and Biden’s virtual climate summit.

Some pledges were renewed, some strengthened, and some introduced to curb emissions globally.

Biden, for example, doubled down on Obama’s previous promise to reach a 25% emissions cut (from 2005 levels) by 2025, setting a goal instead of a 50-52% decrease by 2030. Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, promised a 40-45% cut (from 2005 levels) by 2030.

Japan agreed to reach 46% lower than its 2013 emissions levels by 2030.

South Korea will end all financing for new coal projects moving forward.

Even Bolsonaro swore to end illegal deforestation by 2030, a major contributor to the Amazon rainforest fires of last spring. 

China and India made no new pledges, but reaffirmed their previous promises to limit coal consumption over the next five years; India and the U.S. announced a new climate partnership.

All of the above reasserted its commitments to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Green advocates (like me), members of frontline communities, energy sector workers, and citizens of the world alike know that their work isn’t over.

But it is essential that we stay informed and engaged in what kind of world those who represent us plan to create, and how they aim to repair the damage we’ve done.

The post Biggest Miner’s Union in U.S. Backs Renewable Energy appeared first on The Urban Monk.

But the reality is that our new fascination with digital dealings may be even more detrimental to the environment than our previous low-tech practices.

When bitcoin hit the scene a little over a decade okay, few considered the ethical impact on the environment. Mostly, published concerns were about the decentralization of finances, the safety of their money, and whether or not the cryptocurrency trend had legs as a potential store of value.

With some distance from the craze, now more stable than in its famously volatile past, it seems we should have been worrying about more than its impact on traditional banking.

Eco advocates say cryptocurrency is a nightmare for the planet. 

How? Why? What does that even mean?

It takes an unbelievable amount of electricity to power the blockchain (the network of recorded transactions – or blocks – where cryptocurrency events are stored).

That means that it’s possible, and some would say necessarily responsible, to calculate blockchain transactions’ carbon footprint.

Even if you don’t follow the Bitcoin blockchain saga, you may have heard about its most recent record-breaking charge…

Or its offspring in the digital art world: non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

First, let’s talk about what NFTs and cryptocurrency are.

Then we’ll get into how they’ve managed to become a relevant threat to greenhouse gas pollution.

A Decentralized Center of Commerce

People don’t trust banks. People don’t trust their governments. People don’t trust the stock market. 

Thus was cryptocurrency born – if those institutions are all the watchdogs for each other, then who watches the watchmen? 

So the blockchain became the answer: No one watches the watchmen. By publishing and permanently storing all transactions ever made on the blockchain, a regulatory body’s need was eliminated.

NFTs take possible blockchain use cases a step further – what if we could use the blockchain to own digital items (like artwork, GIFs, historic tweets, songs, things in video games, etc.) and store the record of purchase?

So far, things like the “Deal With It” Nyan Cat GIF and Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet have been purchased for millions.

If you find all of this confusing, you are not alone. What you need to grasp is this: NFTs are the vessel that contains a digital item. 

The purchase and proof of ownership for that digital item live in a digital marketplace space that’s stored on the Ethereum blockchain. 

At this point, you’re probably wondering – why is this bad for the environment?

What makes cryptocurrency and NFT so tantalizing to the wary consumer is how hard it is to fudge the records… and here’s why.

Compare the Electricity Usage to Ours

The blockchain Etherum has been shown to use slightly less energy per year than Nigeria’s entire country. One transaction on the Ethereum blockchain uses as much energy as one EU resident’s total power consumption over four days. 

That’s quite a lot of energy.

That’s because the process of “mining” coins – litecoin, bitcoin, dogecoin, or any other kind of cryptocurrency – is really energy efficient. It’s designed that way on purpose. 

The more time a person would spend trying to change the record of a transaction, the more electricity they’d use and the more expensive that venture would be for them.

Using NFTs (making, buying, or selling a digital item to be stored in an NFT) means that miners have to spend more time “unlocking” – or increasing the available store of – cryptocurrencies to create the record and complete the transaction.

The result is that this digital enterprise ends up using so much electricity we have to calculate its environmental impact now.

And it doesn’t look great.

Are Carbon Offsets a Real Solution?

NFTs aren’t the problem. They’re just another facet of the problem.

The problem is the computational load of the contracts and proof-of-work-or-purchase that mining blockchains have to bear. 

Simply put?

It takes a whole lot of work to make any event on the blockchain secure. That means time online, storage space, and individuals using energy. 

Because cryptocurrency is elbowing its way into mainstream usage, and now NFTs are too, the companies that use them often promise to offset their carbon – but again, who watches the watchmen? 

Oftentimes, carbon trading can be an insular business with dealings that don’t result in the same amount of carbon being captured as was used in the first place. 

It’s intense. And it’s the same problem we run into when we talk about how to replace our electricity grid with renewable energy sources. 

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and carbon offsets aren’t always doing as much as we think they are. 

At least, not until we legislate away oil and gas subsidies, safely transition the energy workers of the past into the energy work of the future, and fund clean energy research so that cryptocurrency and NFTs can do what they’re meant to do without doing drastically changing the landscape of our environment. 

The post Digital Money Somehow Still Disastrous for the Environment appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Well, that’s not all we seem to be “short” on. Rice, eggs, milk, bread, canned soup, beans, pasta, peanut butter – they’re flying off the shelves as people all over the country anticipate shopping like our pioneer ancestors. 

Although we’re assured that there’s plenty of food available and grocery stores will continue to be restocked, empty shelves and rising prices have many of us thinking about revising our shopping strategies.

Sort of like when our pioneer ancestors would make a monthly trip down to the closest town and load up on essentials.

But you see, even before the crisis, we were incredibly wasteful shoppers. 

Even though 23.5 million Americans lack access to fresh produce, we waste 43% of the food that we buy (much of which is still edible). As a nation, we spent about $144 billion on food every year that we don’t end up eating.

That means there’s a disconnect somewhere – we’re either buying too much that we don’t need, not buying the right things, or wasting food that we think has gone bad when it hasn’t. 

And during this global crisis, it’s doubly important that we’re careful and deliberate in the ways that we shop for our families.

Let’s go over some simple tips to help you not only reduce waste, but shop effectively.

Buy Foundational Foods in Bulk 

Most dietary guidelines suggest that carbohydrates make up 45-65% of your daily caloric intake. 

And when we’re planning dinner, we often think in terms of: meat, vegetable, and starch/carb/base.

To limit packaging waste, save you money, reduce your trips to the grocery store, and focus on foods that won’t go bad, make sure that you’re buying these items in bulk:

• Pasta (whole wheat, lentil, vegetable, black bean, quinoa, brown rice are all great options – try to avoid enriched flour pasta.)
• Brown rice/basmati rice
• Couscous
• Frozen riced cauliflower
• Potatoes (stored in a basket for better ventilation, in a cool, dark, humid place)
• Steel-cut oats
• Popcorn

Additionally, consider buying frozen veggies in bulk instead of making weekly trips to the grocery store for fresh produce. 

Not only do you limit your own household’s waste when you don’t get to eat that broccoli in a timely fashion…

But in a lot of cases, frozen veggies are healthier than the produce you see in the aisles. They are usually frozen at the peak of their ripeness, and don’t travel as far to reach your grocery store.

Load Up on Long-Lasting Items

Avocados tend to go bad very quickly. Spaghetti squash, on the other hand, can last two weeks or even longer, if you don’t mind blemishes.

In fact, here are 10 fruits and vegetables with an extra-long shelf-life to focus on:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Winter squashes
• Apples
• Sweet potatoes
• Beets
• Carrots
• Cabbage
• Lemons
• Celery

And 10 fruits and vegetables that ripen and go bad quickly:

• Berries
• Bananas
• Tomatoes
• Green beans
• Broccoli
• Mushrooms
• Parsley
• Asparagus
• Spinach
• Peaches

Avoid Buying Frozen Meals

Although it can be tempting to stock up on frozen meals, there are two main reasons you shouldn’t…

1. They take up way too much space in the freezer and during this time, you’ll likely want to use most of your freezer space to store frozen veggies, frozen fruit, bread, and frozen meat, like:
   1. Tilapia filets
   2. Salmon filets
   3. Ground beef/chicken/turkey
   4. Chuck roasts
   5. Chicken breasts
   6. Pork shoulders 
2. Frozen meals are typically much higher in sodium, trans fats, sugars, and preservatives. It’s critical that you maintain peak health so that your immune system is as equipped as it can be – especially now. That’s not to say you shouldn’t cook your own meals and freeze them… Just try not to stock up on pre-cooked meals at the grocery store.

Keep in mind how many family members you have to feed. 

When you grocery shop, try to shop for food for no more than two weeks at a time, so that you don’t restrict others’ access to the supply chain.

And remember… since we’re doing so much extra shopping, come to the store prepared with cloth totes and mesh bags, instead of using the store’s supply of plastic bags.

Being conscious and purposeful in your grocery choices works out better for your family, for the supply chain, for your wallet, and for the environment.

The post Limiting Waste While Grocery Shopping is ESSENTIAL Right Now appeared first on The Urban Monk.

But for those who were paying attention during the last year…

And ignoring the partisan glad-handing and donor-pandering…

You won’t be surprised to learn that sustainable energy had an incredible year in 2020. 

There were a few excellent, and obvious, reasons that renewable energy sources were our breakout star…

They had a chance to compete with natural gas since travel was reduced unimaginably lower…

Coal is sounding its death rattle (after all, we can’t MAKE there be more coal… they’re fossil fuels)…

And investors began shifting their portfolios to reflect a bleaker outlook on climate change.

With a little bit of distance from the year that made us all reimagine the contours of our lives, Bloomberg NEF (new energy finance) and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

The factbook is pretty dense, but there are some vital statistics it would behoove us all to know as we continue to advocate for not just clean energy, but equitable care of those working in the fossil fuel industry during the country’s transition efforts.

First, let’s examine the differences between 2019 and 2020 via irrefutable evidence.

The Year the Earth Stood Still

Office buildings all over the country – not to mention bars, schools, restaurants, arenas, stores, museums, and more – shut down, but those people just spent time using energy in their homes instead. How did that energy usage shape up, comparatively?

Energy related emissions declined by 10% and transportation related emissions declined by 14%, which led to total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions declining by 9%… 

Which is 20% below 2005 levels and actually puts us back “on track to meet the original Paris Agreement pledge,” according to the report. 

In 2011, coal made up 42% of our annual energy usage as a country. 

In 2020, coal was down to 19%. Nuclear and renewable energy sources now account for 40% of our total usage, nearly as much as natural gas does – 41%. 

However, although we contributed 20% to the total global investment in clean energy (which rose 9% since 2019), our contribution was actually 11% less than what it was in 2019. 

Roughly 58% of that investment into clean energy was in the renewable sector.

Our installation of renewable energy capacity grew 61% from 2019 – that makes 2020 a record year for us. 

Conventional gas-powered car sales fell, while electric vehicle sales remained steady. Natural gas use in vehicles rose 16% from 2019. (Natural gas still emits carbon, but some consider it renewable because the supplies required to make it can be replenished.)

As of 2020, hydropower accounts for 35% of our renewable energy available output. 

In 2020 alone, the U.S. suffered $95 billion “in damages from tropical cyclones, severe storms, droughts, and wildfires,” the predicted and documented result of climate change. 

The hope from the ground is that the enormous price tag associated with relief, clean-up, and rebalancing communities after the aforementioned disasters spooks the government into investing in sustainable infrastructure.

Make it Make Sense

Okay – lots of valuable insights regarding sustainable trends and trajectories. But what does this mean moving forward?

For one thing, the fact that sustainable growth even happened during a year when we lost hundreds of thousands of citizens, millions of jobs, and suffered the wrath of Mother Nature is pretty amazing.

That makes two points clear:

• We can’t go backwards. Future investments in dirty energy won’t just be frowned upon in eco-conscious society – they’ll be financially disastrous.
• We’re better able to handle the problems caused by our dependence on fossil fuels (think weather events) with renewables. Even though there were more extreme weather events in 2020 than in 2019, the energy system was less stressed (if you can believe it!)

Congress even sunk $19 billion in R&D while continuing to extend clean energy tax credits. (If the government’s model for subsidizing fossil fuels is any indication of how well an industry can do with the support of Uncle Sam, we’re in luck!)

And there were some Covid-related issues that hampered what would have been growth for the sustainable energy sector – being unable to travel door-to-door selling solar panels…

Outbreaks at solar farms in the midwest…

Energy efficiency programs shuttered…

And yet, here we are. 

We know that our CO2 emissions will likely rebound as the world slowly reopens. But thanks to the new shift in energy generation balance and the money provided to continue researching solutions, plus the fervent calls from the public to invest in green infrastructure…

We may never go have another year as high as 2019 in carbon emissions. 

The post The Numbers are In: Covid Gave Sustainable Energy a Shot in the Arm appeared first on The Urban Monk.

Back in 1975, when the first home computer model became available, it came in a kit that you assembled at home. (Imagine if you had to do that today… we’d have a lot more computer geniuses or a lot less people with home computers.)

The makers of that model kit probably never considered for a moment what the world would be doing with its electronic waste 45 years later. We can assume that neither did the inventors of the first laptop, window A/C unit, or earbud headphones. 

But with our increasing usage and availability of low-priced, short-term, or downright disposable technology, certain global watchdog groups have formed to track how we’re dealing with our electronic waste (anything with batteries or a plug) and what impact those dealings are having on the world at large.

And – no surprise here – it’s not great.

A group called the Global E-Waste Monitor – supported by the United Nations University, International Telecommunications Union, International Solid Waste Association, World Health Organization, and UN Environment Program – only released their first comprehensive report in 2014. 

Where We’ve Been and Where We Are

In that year, a recorded 41.8 million metric tons of e-waste was produced, comprised of lamps, screens, small IT devices (phones, PCs, printers), small and large household appliances (washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwaves, electric shavers, dryers, ovens, toasters, etc.), and large freezing and cooling machines like refrigerators. 

In 2016, when the next report came out, we were up to 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste. 

Recently, the group’s report for 2019 was published… and globally, we produced 21% more e-waste than five years ago, weighing in at 53.6 million metric tons. The top waste-offenders were Asia, the United States, and Europe (although Europe did recycle their e-waste at the highest rate – 42.5%.)

The same report projected we’d reach 74 million metric tons of e-waste in 2030.

If that happens, e-waste will have become the fastest growing stream of domestic waste, propelled mainly by shorter life cycles, more expensive repairs, and faster upgrades. Think about reports about tech companies deliberately slowing down older models to encourage upgrades, or even how the rise of environmentally sustainable appliances have encouraged people to toss their former models. 

It makes sense that we’ve had a harder time catching on to the need to recycle electronics – some of us are still having a hard time recycling plastic and paper, and those initiatives have been much more present in the public eye for much longer. 

Plus, most of us don’t handle throwing away our refrigerators, or have any idea what happens to an out-of-date laptop when we trade it in for a newer model. (For the record, only about 17.4% of 2019’s e-waste was recycled. Where the rest of it ends up is largely undocumented.)

But e-waste is a problem for different reasons: what the stuff is made of is more toxic than your standard water bottle. 

E-Waste is Made of These

While e-waste contains plenty of toxic chemicals (more on that in a moment), there are also a lot of valuable metals that aren’t being utilized when e-waste gets junked. Metals like gold, silver, copper, and platinum are largely being left on these devices when they’re discarded. 

E-waste with recoverable materials that’s been discarded or incinerated rather than recycled is estimated to be worth $57 billion USD annually.

And the materials in e-waste that aren’t valuable? Well, it turns out they’re directly harmful. Mercury, brominated flame retardants, chlorofluorocarbons, and hydrochlorofluorocarbons are toxic not only to humans, but to the environment. 

When they end up in landfills or toxic waste sites, broken and exposed, they seep into the soil, into our waterways, and travel from there into the air. 50 metrics tons of mercury and 71 metric kilotons are found annually in undocumented e-waste flows. 

In fact, last year, 98 metric tons of C02-equivalents were released into the atmosphere from improperly discarded refrigerators, air conditioning units, and other freezing mechanisms, which contributes to the overall effect of global warming… and is even more prevalent as the Earth continues to warm, since we’ll be using more air conditioning.

And the more we mine for and recreate the valuable materials we’re discarding, the more greenhouse gases we emit in the process.

In short?

The whole thing is a mounting mess.

So what can we do to partake in electronic usage safely?

Consider a few points…

• Buy used
• Buy refurbished
• Repair instead of replace
• Wait to upgrade unless you need it
• Donate your gently-used electronics to charities
• Research the places where you take your electronics to get recycled
• Never throw used electronics in the trash
• Write to your local government to encourage them to develop a plan for dealing with this crisis. Only 78 countries so far have covered e-waste handling in policy, legislation, and regulation. It’s totally possible your region of the world doesn’t have a clue what to do, or hasn’t considered its harms.
• Start your own neighborhood initiative! Work with a local certified electronics recycler to help give them what they need.

This is a global issue – it needs a global answer.

But as with every movement, it starts locally.

The post How We’re E-Wasting Ourselves Closer to a Climate Crisis appeared first on The Urban Monk.