News to feel good about
How about some good news?
I overheard a great mom telling her young daughter, “OK. I understand why that upsets you. Now you have a choice: You can keep feeling sad or you can do something about it. What can you do?”
Some of the planet’s great citizens are doing something about our thornier environmental problems, ones with no quick fix, little reward and requiring a lot of patience. All the more reason it’s encouraging to see progress. Here’s a hopeful sampling.
Plastic, repurposed. We’ve got a long way to go addressing nonrenewable plastic waste, but if Washington State University research can be accelerated, recycling may literally reach new heights. A WSU team has developed a way to convert polyethylene plastic — the most common kind — into jet fuel via chemical recycling (not just melting down and repurposing), with less net CO2 emissions than fossil fuel.
Paper a/c? Professor Yi Zheng at Northeastern University has developed a paper-based source to sustainably cool buildings, without a traditional a/c unit. That might put a dent in the estimated annual 117 million tons of carbon dioxide a/c units release into the air. The cooling paper uses radiative heat transfer, reflecting heat off a roof and absorbing excess heat inside, bringing down room temperature by 10 degrees (so far).
Re-wind. Even renewable energy tools create waste. An Irish and American research collaborative is working on repurposing waste metals from wind turbines — which have a useful life of about 20 years — in civil engineering projects. Some blades have been used for pedestrian walkways or poles, for example.
A cleaner Mississippi. A Louisiana State University study of water quality records going back more than a century shows since the Clean Water Act protections of 1972, the Mississippi River — the second-longest river and drainage system in the U.S. — has been getting cleaner. Oxygen and pH levels are better and bacteria and human waste have been reduced to 1 percent of 1980s levels.
Unanimous panther support. If you didn’t think bipartisan unanimity was even possible anymore, the Florida Legislature voted unanimously in support of protecting and funding an undeveloped wildlife conservation corridor for Florida’s panthers, waters and other wildlife. The 2021 Florida Wildlife Corridor Act made conservation history by securing $400 million in funding to help protect the state’s vast network of natural areas.
Bald eagles are rising. That great American symbol is flourishing, attributed in part to actions taken under the Endangered Species Act and certain pesticide bans. Bald eagle populations in the U.S. have quadrupled since 2009, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report. That’s a big jump from 60 years ago when the count was 417 nesting pairs. Today, the estimate is 316,700 eagles, up from 74,434 in 2009.
“Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding.” — Jacob Bronowski
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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Email Sholeh@cdapress.com.