uphillbothways

Satellite imagery and firsthand accounts show the damage wrought when Chinese authorities opened floodgates and dams this month, sacrificing whole villages to spare politically important cities.

When the remnants of Typhoon Doksuri battered northern China this month, dumping the most rain on Beijing since records began in 1883, it wasn’t only the capital that was threatened. The extreme weather also posed a severe risk to Xiong’an New Area, a sprawling development more than twice the size of New York City.

Xiong’an is a pet project of Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, who declared that it would be a “city of the future” — a “socialist modern metropolis” far beyond the imagination of Western capitals.

Officials jumped into action, pledging to protect the capital and Xiong’an — under construction for the past six years — at all costs. Authorities began using a network of dams and reservoirs starting July 30 to discharge water from overflowing rivers into seven designated flood zones in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing. It was the region’s largest effort to control flooding in 60 years.

Hebei’s Communist Party secretary said the province would “resolutely serve as the moat” for the capital. Officials also pledged to protect the port city of Tianjin, population 15 million, to the east and the new Daxing international airport to the south.

Visual evidence and firsthand accounts gathered by The Washington Post show that, while the effort diverted water away from Xiong’an and other urban areas, it directly contributed to the devastation of rural villages in Hebei, destroying homes and livelihoods. Satellite images reveal that authorities’ actions led to a dramatic increase of water across those areas, covering at least 95 square miles — almost 46,000 football fields. In one of the clearest examples, more than 20 square miles of farmland near Xiong’an’s high-speed railway station were still underwater on Aug. 5.

The idea that rural areas are better suited to take the brunt of flooding dates to as early as the 1950s and 1960s, when most of the country’s flood zones — areas that are deliberately flooded to absorb excess water — were built. But such areas are no longer as sparsely populated as they once were. Local governments have allowed towns in designated flood zones to grow, despite regulations meant to control the number of residents living there.

“Is it the government’s fault or is it the people’s fault for moving back to these places?” said Wang Weiluo, an engineer and expert on China’s water system who is based in Germany. “It’s the government’s. All those people were given approvals to build their homes there. They’re the government’s rules and they didn’t enforce them.”

These areas would have experienced some degree of flooding, given the historic amounts of rainfall last month. But experts believe it was made worse by the authorities who opened floodgates on dams, releasing more than 1 trillion gallons of water — equivalent to 1.6 million Olympic swimming pools — into nearby villages and farmland.

“They chose to protect some so-called important areas and abandon some so-called not important areas. It’s a political decision,” Wang said.

Some residents in these areas interviewed by The Post said they weren’t aware that they lived in flood storage zones. Others said government flood control staff didn’t notify them before their homes were inundated and all their belongings destroyed.

It may never be known how many people died or were displaced as a result of these decisions, but at least 29 people in Hebei perished during the flooding. About 1.75 million people were relocated, including more than 900,000 from zones where houses were flooded. The economic damage totaled $13 billion in a province where rural incomes are less than a quarter of incomes in Beijing.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources and the Hebei Water Resources Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Authorities knew of risks to villages
As the rain hammered China’s northeast at the end of July, waters surged down the Baigou and South Juma rivers toward Xiong’an. Hebei flood control authorities quickly shut the Baigouyin Gate, stopping the deluge from reaching a lake in Xiong’an. Hundreds of workers, toiling in the rain to reinforce levees and dams, vowed not to let “a drop of water” enter the development.

Other dams were opened to push floodwaters east toward farmland and villages in the county of Bazhou — the “vegetable basket” of the region. They were soon submerged.

“My home is gone. My factory equipment is destroyed. Many people still need to pay mortgages and car loans, and their children’s tuition fees,” said a factory manager in Renzhuangzi village in Bazhou county, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from local authorities. “Of course I’m angry.”

A wider analysis of the Bazhou area showed approximately 55 square miles of additional surface water remained in the area near Bazhou on Aug. 5, according to imagery analyzed by Samira Daneshgar Asl, a remote sensing scientist with the geospatial research firm ESRI.

The following week, Hebei’s party secretary, Ni Yuefeng — the same one who pledged to use his province as a moat for Beijing — visited the diversion system by the Baigouyin dam and held a meeting on the flood efforts. Applauding the cadres who protected Xiong’an, he said that “under the strong leadership” of Xi, they had protected the “project of the millennium,” he said.

Public documents reviewed by The Post showed that central and local government water officials should have been well aware of long-standing problems in Hebei’s flood management system that may have added to the damage.

As many as 70 percent of the dikes in the Hai River Basin, which encompasses Hebei, are prone to collapse, according to a report released in April from the Haihe Water Conservancy, part of the central government’s Ministry of Water Resources.

A 2021 Hebei government document said the “slow progress” building emergency safety structures like flood barriers, shelters and elevated platforms would cause “serious losses” if the flood zones were to be used.

Residents have made their anger as clear. Dozens of people gathered outside Bazhou government offices on Aug. 5 in a rare protest. They unfurled a long red banner with white writing that read: “Give back our homes. It was clearly water being discharged yet you still said it was the rain.”

Sacrificing part for the whole
Upstream from Xiong’an, in the village of Dongmaying, which was suddenly flooded on Aug. 3, residents were confused — and later angry — about why their homes were suddenly drenched when it had stopped raining two days before in that area.

“This wasn’t normal waterlogging. It was water being discharged. We live in a flood storage zone so we are expendable if it means protecting Beijing and Xiong’an,” said Zhang, a resident, who spoke on the condition that her full name not be used.

“There used to be no Xiong’an New Area. Now, we could be flooded at any time,” she said.

About 31 square miles of additional surface water remained in Dongmaying on Aug. 5, according to SAR imagery analyzed by Daneshgar Asl. At least 113,000 people had to be evacuated from the wider area.

Others, unaware their villages could be intentionally flooded, said they weren’t given any advance warning. One 70-year-old resident and his 64-year-old wife living in Zhuozhou, in another flood zone, had no time to prepare when floodwaters reached the second floor of their house on Aug. 2. The couple escaped to the roof and waited six hours until a neighbor passing by in a fishing boat rescued them.

“Even as the water was coming into our home, we didn’t hear a word. The government here isn’t doing anything,” said the resident, who spoke on the condition that his full name not be used out of concern for his security for criticizing authorities.

The Chinese Communist Party has set out a clear pecking order in the case of flooding. During floods in Hebei in 1996, the provincial party secretary said Beijing and Tianjin were top priority, then came railroads and oil fields. Last were the people, who would “absorb the danger and losses” for their country.

It seems little has changed. As these areas flooded on Aug. 1, a newspaper operated by China’s Ministry of Water Resources said, “It’s inevitable that you sacrifice one part for the sake of the whole.”

“The principle of flood control is to minimize losses,” Zhang Jianyun, director of the Climate Change Research Center of the Ministry of Water Resources, told a state-affiliated outlet this month. “It’s necessary to protect big cities because the cost of flooding is very high. After the flood recedes, farmland can be replanted and the loss is relatively small.”

But the losses are no longer small. Both Bazhou and Zhuozhou are home to more than half a million people, and they have been allowed to expand despite regulations stipulating growth be controlled and residents from frequently used flood zones be relocated. The population of Bazhou is now 45 percent higher than in 1996, while in Zhuozhou, it’s up one-quarter.

The episode has created a challenge for the Chinese leadership as it faces the country’s worst economic prospects in four decades, with residents demanding to know why they were deemed less important.

Weeks after the floods, protesters were still gathering in Bazhou, demanding compensation from the government. Online, people continue to vent: “To protect the big cities, you sacrifice the towns. To protect the cities, you sacrifice the countryside,” one user wrote recently on the microblog Weibo. “This is privilege manifested.”

archive link: https://archive.ph/vibbO

Hurricane Idalia is now thrashing much of northern Florida and south Georgia, whipping winds up to 90 mph, dumping heavy rain and hurling seawater into flooded cities as its impacts a 250-mile swath of the Southeast.

Hurricane Idalia is now thrashing much of northern Florida and south Georgia, whipping winds up to 90 mph, dumping heavy rain and hurling seawater into flooded cities as its impacts a 250-mile swath of the Southeast.

Several major bridges connecting islands to the mainland are now inaccessible as Idalia’s violent trek across Florida also threatens coastal Georgia and South Carolina with intense flooding, ferocious winds and tornadoes.

Idalia slammed Florida’s Big Bend area – the nook between the panhandle and peninsula – near Keaton Beach Wednesday morning at a dangerous Category 3 strength. That part of the Gulf Coast hasn’t seen such deadly storm surge and wind gust for at least 125 years.

In the vulnerable island city of Cedar Key, a water level record was shattered amid 8 to 9 feet of storm surge. And the water was still rising fast – predicted to hurl seawater as high as halfway up the second floor of an average building. (emphasis added)

Water levels on the Steinhatchee River in the Big Bend town of the same name rose more than 9 feet in about two hours Wednesday morning, reaching more than 8 feet higher than the normal highest tides and breaking – by a foot – the record set during Hurricane Hermine in 2016.

Swaths of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Fort Myers Beach also have been engulfed by wind-whipped seawater and torrential rain.

Then there’s the looming threat of a massive “king tide.” Officials in western Florida warned residents not to get a false sense of security as the hurricane slowly pulls away. (emphasis added)

“We fear that residents will walk outside, see it’s sunny outside and think everything’s fine. But there’s more water coming,” warned Rob Herrin, spokesperson for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue. “There’s still so many hazards after the winds and rains have cleared.”

‘We’re effectively cut off from the world now’

Even before landfall, Cedar Key looked “almost apocalyptic,” resident Michael Bobbitt said early Wednesday. Hours later, the disastrous storm surge had overwhelmed it.

“We’re effectively cut off from the world now,” Bobbit said. “It’s going to get a lot worse, and I’m really fearful for what we’re going to find in some of the low-lying areas and some of our older, more infirm citizens today.”

Storm surge accounts for about half of all hurricane-related deaths, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Meanwhile, a tornado watch is in place for nearly 12 million people across central and northern Florida and southeast Georgia until 3 p.m. Wednesday.

And destruction is possible far behind Idalia’s forecast cone, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday morning. At least 11 tornado warnings already had been issued, with more possible – even in places “way outside the cone that you see on your TV screens,” he said.

Here are other developments around the state:

• Air travel halted: Hundreds of flights have been canceled as Tampa International Airport suspended commercial operations and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport Terminal building closed Tuesday.

• Bridges are shut down: Major bridges connecting St. Petersburg to mainland Florida have been closed, according to online data from the Florida Department of Transportation. Road access to smaller barrier islands also is closed, Pinellas County Emergency Management said on X, formerly Twitter.

• Evacuations in at least 28 counties: Alachua, Baker, Citrus, Dixie, Franklin, Gilchrist, Gulf, Hamilton, Hernando, Hillsborough, Jefferson, Lafayette, Leon, Levy, Madison, Manatee, Marion, Nassau, Pasco, Pinellas, Putnam, Sarasota, Suwannee, Sumter, Taylor, Union, Volusia and Wakulla have all issued evacuation orders, some mandatory. An emergency declaration covers 49 of 67 Florida counties.

• Power knocked out: Nearly 270,000 homes, businesses and other power customers in Florida and nearly 40,000 in Georgia had no electricity around 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.com.

• Thousands in shelters: Nearly 4,500 people are taking refuge in shelters in the impact area, Red Cross data Wednesday shows. The most people – 442 – were at a site in Largo, Florida, with more than 100 shelters open across the storm’s path, the aid group said.

• Officials prepare to respond: President Joe Biden will address the government response to the hurricane Wednesday afternoon, a White House official said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has supplies and teams on standby, including urban search and rescue teams, to assist with the response as soon as the storm passes, the official said. At least eight urban search-and-rescue teams, 33 ambulance strike teams and 5,500 National Guard members are ready, and the Coast Guard is on standby, officials said Wednesday morning.

• Hospitals suspend services: Patients were being transferred from at least three hospitals: HCA Florida Pasadena Hospital, HCA Florida Trinity West Hospital and HCA Florida West Tampa Hospital. Meanwhile, Tampa General Hospital was constructing a water-impermeable barrier to remain open for emergency care.

• Schools and universities close: 50 county school districts have issued closures, as did dozens of college and university systems across Florida.

• Thousands of inmates evacuated: Roughly 4,000 inmates were evacuated or relocated to facilities better equipped to handle the storm, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.

What’s coming after landfall

Damaging winds and heavy rain now will spread far inland into Florida, parts of Georgia and even the Carolinas. Idalia’s center is forecast to move near or along the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina late Wednesday and Thursday, the hurricane center said.

“Idalia is likely to still be a hurricane while moving across southern Georgia, and possibly when it reaches the coast of Georgia or southern South Carolina late today,” the hurricane center said Wednesday morning.

North Carolina and Georgia have also declared states of emergency as they prepare for floods and hurricane force winds.

In Florida, Tallahassee and Gainesville will likely continue to experience hurricane conditions through Wednesday, with heavy rain, flooding and winds gusting over 50 miles per hour. Gainesville could also see tornadoes.

Into Georgia, Savannah is likely to see tropical storm conditions through Wednesday night, with flooding and storm surge between 3 and 5 feet and possible tornadoes. The storm’s outer bands could hit Atlanta with thunderstorms and winds up to 20 mph.

Charleston, South Carolina, into early Thursday could see tropical storm conditions, including heavy rain, flooding, tornadoes and storm surge of 3 to 5 feet.

And in Wilmington, North Carolina, tropical storm conditions are possible into Thursday, with heavy rain, flooding and storm surge of 1 to 3 feet.

archive link: https://archive.is/YtMuW

In today’s newsletter: the 38-year-old entrepreneur has emerged as the most potent threat to Donald Trump in the GOP’s bid for the White House. But what does he stand for?

Good morning. It’s more than a year until Americans choose their next president, but the race to be the Republican nominee is well under way. Their frontrunner is some guy called Donald Trump – you’ve probably heard of him. The one with the mugshot.

But today we are looking at the 38-year-old “anti-woke” tech bro who could end up being Trump’s greatest rival. Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, was widely viewed as the “winner” of the first Republican TV debate last week. Selling himself as “a patriot who speaks the truth”, he called the climate change agenda a “hoax” and promised “revolution” rather than “incremental reform”. Oh, and he vowed that one of his first acts as president would be to pardon Trump for whatever he may have been convicted of by then. Lovely stuff.

So does this bumptious upstart stand a chance at getting the Republican nomination? And could youth win over experience if he ends up going head-to-head with Joe Biden in 2024? In today’s newsletter, I discuss all this and more with Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the US and Americas programme at the thinktank Chatham House.

In depth: ‘Is Trump’s base really going to grab on to someone who doesn’t look like them?’

Who is Vivek Ramaswamy?

Born in Ohio in 1985, Ramaswamy is the son of Indian Hindu immigrants, just like the UK’s own Rishi Sunak. Ramaswamy’s mother worked as a geriatric psychiatrist; his father was an engineer and a patent lawyer at General Electric.

Unlike the UK prime minister, “Ramaswamy made his own money – he didn’t marry into it”, says Dr Leslie Vinjamuri. He founded the biotechnology firm Roivant Sciences, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars with bold claims about an Alzheimer’s drug which, well, ultimately failed its clinical trial. Ramaswamy still got rich, though, taking out at least $200m (£159m) from the company, according to the New York Times.

Remind you of anyone? Like Elizabeth Holmes, the Stanford dropout in jail for defrauding investors with her useless blood-testing company, Ramaswamy has also featured on the cover of Forbes magazine. They called him “The 30-year-old CEO conjuring drug companies from thin air.” To be clear: First Edition is not suggesting the presidential hopeful is guilty of criminal fraud, just that he shares the same talent for self-publicity as Holmes.

Despite styling himself as an anti-establishment outsider, he went to Harvard, where he studied biology and performed libertarian-themed rap music under the alter ego “Da Vek”. Like Kendall at Logan’s birthday party, Ramaswamy is prone to spitting bars in public – often by Eminem, who has asked him to cease and desist using his music on the campaign trail.

What does Ramaswamy believe in?

These are Ramaswamy’s “10 truths”, according to his campaign website: “God is real. There are two genders. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels. Reverse racism is racism. An open border is no border. Parents determine the education of their children. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty. There are three branches of the US government, not four. The US constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.”

Ramaswamy, the bestselling author of 2021’s Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, wants to see a much smaller state, and has promised to abolish most federal agencies, including the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has called the climate crisis agenda a “hoax”, saying that while he accepts the climate is changing (which he says was ever thus), policies to address it “have little to do with climate change and more to do with penalising the west as a way to achieve global ‘equity’”.

Does he have a chance?

“He is certainly a contender,” says Vinjamuri. “I mean, right now, nobody’s a serious contender because Trump is sailing so far ahead. But any number of things could happen to Trump, and if one of those things happens, then Vivek Ramaswamy is the person who has captured front and centre of the GOP debates. He was the one everyone on stage wanted to put down. And that usually happens when somebody looks like a real threat.”

Will Trump ultimately secure the Republican nomination? “There’s nothing self evident that would rule him out,” she says. There are not many eligibility requirements for US presidents and a criminal record doesn’t disqualify someone from the race, so in theory, yes. But it’d be pretty difficult to campaign from prison.

If Trump is stopped it will not be “because someone says it’s illegal for him to stand, but because somebody makes the calculation that the public opinion is moving against him – too many indictments, trials, all these legal proceedings – and he is becoming less interesting and somebody else is taking the stage.”

Could Ramaswamy be that somebody? He is currently third in the polls, with Trump flying higher than ever on 49.2%. Meanwhile, Trump’s onetime nearest rival – Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who was polling 40% in January – loses support almost every time he opens his mouth. He is now down to 14.19%, with Ramaswamy next on 10.1%.

“A lot of it is going to come down to: where do people put their money?” says Vinjamuri. Ramaswamy has high-profile support from rightwing billionaires including PayPal founder Peter Thiel, as my colleague Martin Pengelly has reported.

Vinjamuri is not convinced that Ramaswamy, as the “dark-skinned son of an immigrant”, will be able to appeal to Trump’s base. “They’ll like his anti-climate, anti-woke rhetoric,” she says. “But are they really going to grab on to someone who doesn’t looks like them? The Republican party has been so dominated by a man who has peddled white nationalism, who has been racist in his rhetoric.”

Can he beat Biden?

“General elections are won in the swing states,” says Vinjamuri. “And the Democrats are not gonna swing to Ramaswamy because on every issue he is just so far away from them.”

Joe Biden has declared his candidacy, despite more than three-quarters of respondents in a new US poll saying he would be too old to be effective if re-elected president next year, when he will be 81.

“The view in the Democratic camp is that if it’s going to be Trump, it needs to be Biden. But if it’s Ramaswamy, what about Pete Buttigieg?” she says, referring to Biden’s 41-year-old secretary of state for transport, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020. “If Trump exits the scene, everything becomes an open question.”

What else we’ve been reading
... more at link...

archive link: https://archive.is/E0lrh

Secretariat on biodiversity says fungi should be recognised and protected on equal footing with plants and animals

The word “funga” should be used alongside flora and fauna when discussing conservation issues to reflect the importance of fungi to ecosystem health, a UN body has said.

The secretariat of the UN convention on biological diversity (UNCBD) said it was time that fungi were “recognised and protected on an equal footing with animals and plants in legal conservation frameworks”.

“Whenever referring to the macroscopic diversity of life on Earth, we should use ‘flora, fauna and funga’, and ‘animal, plants and fungi’,” it said in an Instagram post.

Mycologists, mostly from Latin America, established the term “funga” five years ago. It refers to the levels of diversity of fungi in any given place, and is analogous to “flora and fauna”, which refer to plants and animals. Unlike flora and fauna, it is not a Latin term but was chosen because it is morphologically similar.

“Just like mycelium, mycologically inclusive language will spread unseen but profound [sic], permeating public consciousness (and policy) to acknowledge fungi’s vital role in the grand web of life on and in Earth,” it said.

Government agencies in Australia, Brazil, Iceland and elsewhere have picked up on the word. Its creation and use reflects an increasing appreciation of the fungal kingdom and how it connects the plant world through an underground mycelial network.

“Through language, we can trigger change,” the chief executive of the Fungi Foundation, Giuliana Furci, said. “It gives us an opportunity to look at nature as an interdependent set of ecosystems: If we concentrate on fungal conservation, we can protect whole habitats.”

On the invention of the phrase “fauna, flora and funga”, she said: “We wanted something catchy that could incorporate fungi into the conversation.”

In a joint piece for Time this year, Furci and the biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake wrote: “Accounts of the living world that do not include fungi are accounts of a world that doesn’t exist.

“Fungi have long sustained and enriched life on Earth. We are unthinkable without them, and yet we are only just beginning to understand the intricacies of fungal lives. It’s time we give them the attention they deserve.”

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/VBGGJ

The scraps in your bin marked ‘compost’ may end up as methane. Here’s what that means

When orange bins marked for “compost” drop-off first started proliferating on the streets of New York in February as part of a department of sanitation pilot, many residents celebrated. I was one of them: even as an environmental reporter who has visited the landfill where my trash ends up and is well aware of the problems with food waste, the lack of convenient composting options near me was often prohibitive. Having a bin within walking distance I could access at any time meant all my food waste would finally be converted back into soil.

Or at least that’s what I thought it meant, until the news broke in April that the contents of those “compost” bins mostly don’t go to compost sites, but to an anaerobic digester at a wastewater treatment plant called Newtown Creek. There, the food waste is mixed into sewage before being converted partially into methane.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this, and neither were my neighbors, given that methane is a potent greenhouse gas playing a role in the climate crisis.

Questions about anaerobic digestion – touted as a green solution to food waste – are becoming relevant in more and more places as this method is increasingly a part of organic waste management plans across the US, with plants operating or being built everywhere from Ohio to California and embraced by brands such as Ben & Jerry’s. It’s also fairly common in parts of Europe. But how do its environmental credentials stack up against composting?

The pros and cons of anaerobic digestion
Both composting and anaerobic digestion, or AD, use microorganisms to break down food waste. Composting does so in the presence of oxygen, and creates (you guessed it) compost; AD does so without oxygen and produces solid and liquid organic leftover matter called digestate – and methane.

When anaerobic digestion is at its most climate-friendly, that methane is captured and used for what Dr Stephanie Lansing, a professor of environmental science and technology at the University of Maryland, calls renewable energy, while the solids left over after the AD process are cured and turned into compost. From Lansing’s perspective, these options make AD the clear winner over composting.

“Why would you not want to get the renewable energy first, and then get the compost later, because you still get both resources when you do digestion?” she asked.

But whether or not AD actually comes with those promised environmental benefits depends on how an anaerobic digestion facility is run, which can vary greatly. Though the methane can be turned into energy to power houses or waste facilities themselves, many still flare (burn and release into the atmosphere) some of the methane they generate. (The plant nearest me, Newtown Creek, was flaring half of its methane up until this April.)

And even when all the gas from a digester is being captured and used for energy, not everyone is comfortable describing it as “renewable energy”. According to Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “‘renewable’ implies a resource that can be replenished. And for me, it implies that it can be replenished with little ecological cost. But generating garbage is not something we want to be doing at all, so that’s not something that we should be thinking of as renewable.”

The NRDC isn’t anti-anaerobic digestion, and it “sometimes supports the inclusion of anaerobic digestion biogas in renewable energy portfolios”, but in a “limited” way, Hoover added. A recent report published by the non-profit instead recommended prioritizing surplus food rescue, food waste prevention and compost over sending food waste directly to anaerobic digesters.

Another recommendation the NRDC makes – that the solids left over at the end of anaerobic digestion be turned into compost and added to soil – is a good practice, and one that AD proponents often highlight. But in reality, the practice is underutilized: more than half of all biosolids in the US are landfilled or incinerated rather than composted. When anaerobic digesters process food waste and sewage sludge at the same time, rather than processing food waste on its own, the end result can contain toxins that render the digestate unfit for adding to dirt that people are in close contact with, ie garden or public park soils.

“The takeaway is not ‘you should never do anaerobic digestion,’” said Hoover. “But it is ‘you should really think through a lot of different components before you launch into using anaerobic digestion for food waste in particular.’”

The case for composting
Many people are familiar with the basic argument for composting: it reduces food waste and the associated greenhouse gases, and leaves behind an end product that supports healthy soils.

But according to Dior St Hillaire, co-director of composting non-profit BK Rot and chair of the Bronx Solid Waste Advisory Board, the benefits go much deeper.

Composting can create local green jobs, build community and generate crucial buy-in, so people are more motivated to separate out their food and yard waste rather than throwing it in the trash.

“That connection is lost when you’re thinking about anaerobic digestion,” she said. “You already see low numbers of recycling because people are not connected to it; they don’t believe it’s happening or believe in the viability of it. So imagine what [organics separation] is going to look like when you have people who are not connected to that end result. I think you’ll find really low participation rates.”

Keeping nutrients cycling locally through compost rather than trucking waste off to a digester also promotes climate resilience. According to Clare Miflin, executive director of the Center for Zero Waste Design, adding compost to soil boosts the health of the trees and greenery that help cities combat dangerous heat. Plus, healthy soils amended with compost absorb up to “six times more rainwater”, protecting the city against floods.

A side-by-side comparison
When weighing the benefits of composting and anaerobic digestion, not everyone agrees on which should come out on top. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prioritizes anaerobic digestion above composting in its food recovery hierarchy; meanwhile, the NRDC places the two options on the same tier and says the best option depends on the scenario.

In New York City, anaerobic digestion looks likely to continue expanding, and financial incentives are almost certainly playing a role. Wastewater treatment plants with digesters receive a “tipping fee” from garbage collectors for accepting food waste, according to the EPA, and facilities that scrub their methane to pipeline quality can sell it as “renewable fuel”, at which point they’re “guaranteed a nice rate by federal law”, said Lansing.

Hoover, of the NRDC, doesn’t think that AD being part of a city’s mix of waste management strategies is necessarily a bad thing. It just means cities and their citizens need to weigh the specifics of any proposed composting or anaerobic digestion system, and demand that it’s held to the highest standards.

Along the way, city agencies need to be transparent if they want citizens to actively participate in the waste sorting necessary to make any of these solutions work. Slapping “compost” on the side of a street corner bin might convince citizens to dump their banana peels there, but if people find out later that those bins don’t actually go to compost, it could break trust and lead to composting being regarded with the suspicion currently reserved for recycling.

“We don’t want to keep sending more messages that it’s OK to say we’re doing one thing, and we’re actually doing another,” said St Hillaire.

Luckily, there are a few things everyone seems to agree on. First, certain kinds of waste are better handled by one system or the other: anaerobic digestion can accept dairy, meat and grease that compost sites can’t, while compost is better able to break down paper goods. And even more important, both options offer significant climate benefits. According to a report from the National Renewable Energy Lab, anaerobic digestion and composting have comparable emissions footprints when the AD digestate is applied to soil rather than landfilled.

From the perspective of many environmental advocates, the best solution will involve some mix of the two solutions, blending the efficiency and financial incentives of AD with the community and ecosystem benefits of composting.

“It’s not that AD trumps all or compost trumps all,” said St Hillaire. “New York City is a big city with a very dense population, we need as many [solutions] as possible.”

In other words, both anaerobic digestion and composting are far better options than landfilling, so keep separating out your organics rather than throwing them in the trash. I know I will.

archive link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/30/composting-anaerobic-digestion-food-waste-effective

The statement was the Kremlin's first explicit acknowledgement that he may have been assassinated.

• Prigozhin's plane may have been downed
• Investigation has different versions
• Prigozhin was killed on Aug. 23
• Russia not to probe crash under international rules
• At Prigozhin's grave, followers hail a warrior

MOSCOW, Aug 30 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday that investigators were considering the possibility that the plane carrying mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was downed on purpose, the first explicit acknowledgement that he may have been assassinated.

"It is obvious that different versions are being considered, including the version - you know what we are talking about – let's say, a deliberate atrocity," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the investigation.

Asked if the International Civil Aviation Organization would investigate the crash, Peskov said that the circumstances made it different, though he cautioned that investigators had made no formal conclusions yet about what exactly took place.

"Let's wait for the results of our Russian investigation," Peskov said.

The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was travelling to St Petersburg from Moscow crashed north of Moscow killing all 10 people on board on Aug. 23, including two other top Wagner figures, Prigozhin's four bodyguards and a crew of three.

The cause is still unclear, but villagers near the scene told Reuters they heard a bang and then saw the jet plummet to the ground.

The plane crashed exactly two months since Prigozhin took control of the southern city of Rostov in late June, the opening salvo of a mutiny which shook the foundations of President Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Russia has informed Brazil's aircraft investigation authority that it will not probe the crash of the Brazilian-made Embraer (EMBR3.SA) jet under international rules "at the moment", the Brazilian agency told Reuters.

Asked about that report, Peskov said: "First of all, the investigation is under way, the Investigative Committee is engaged in this."

"In this case there can be no talk of any international aspect," Peskov said.

The day after the crash, Putin sent his condolences to the families of those killed and said he had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the chaotic years of the early 1990s.

"He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life," Putin said, while describing him as a talented businessman.

The Kremlin has rejected as an "absolute lie" the suggestion by some Western politicians and commentators - for which they have not provided evidence - that Putin ordered Prigozhin to be killed in revenge.

U.S. President Joe Biden has said he was not surprised by the death and that not much happened in Russia that Putin was not behind.

After Prigozhin's death, Putin ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state - a step that Prigozhin had opposed due to his anger at the defence ministry that he said risked losing the Ukraine war.

Followers of Prigozhin laid flowers, messages and poetry at his grave on Wednesday, hailing him as a fearless warrior.

In life, Prigozhin liked to brag that he was one of the world's most feared mercenaries with the best fighting force.

Opponents such as the United State cast Prigozhin as a brutal commander who plundered African states and meted out sledehammer deaths to those who crossed him.

Though he won the bloodiest battle yet of the Ukraine war for Putin by capturing Bakhmut, Prigozhin became enraged with what he said were the treacherous failings of Putin's military - and warned that Russia could lose the entire Ukraine war.

archive link: https://archive.is/YRKuW

Russia has seen the biggest drone assault on its territory since it launched its war on Ukraine while Moscow killed two men in a near-simultaneous bombardment on Kyiv, as the aerial intensity of the conflict ratcheted up.

Six Russian regions including Moscow came under attack early Wednesday, while in the city of Pskov, near the Estonian border, several transport planes were reportedly damaged when drones targeted an airport.

Russian officials haven’t reported any casualties, and claimed to have thwarted almost all of the strikes.

Kyiv officials meanwhile said Russia hit the Ukrainian capital with a “massive” bombardment overnight. “Kyiv has not experienced such a powerful attack since spring,” Serhii Popko, the head of the city’s Military Administration, said on Telegram.

Popko said several groups of drones were traveling towards Kyiv “from different directions” and later missiles were launched towards the capital. More than 20 “enemy targets” were destroyed by air defense forces, he added.

Two people were killed – men aged 26 and 36 years old – and three people sustained injuries of varying severity from falling debris, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration.

Across the country, Ukraine downed 28 cruise missiles and destroyed 15 out of 16 drones launched overnight, the Commander in Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said Wednesday.

“The trees were on fire. There was lot of smoke … shrapnel went through the thick cabinet on my balcony,” Yelena Yemelyanova, 69, told CNN on Wednesday in Kyiv.

“The wave of the blast swung me to the corridor wall. Everything fell from the kitchen cabinets,” she said. “The front door of the apartment was blown out.”

Another resident in the proximity of one of the blasts, Victor Savchuk, told CNN that his 15-year-old grandson was left soaked in blood after debris fell on him. “The sirens go off every day one, two three times a day. We don’t know what to expect,” Savchuk said.

Flights shut down in Moscow

Ukraine has increasingly been emboldened to hit strategic targets inside Russia through the air in recent weeks, even as it suffers assaults on its own cities, setting up a new phase of the conflict defined by Kyiv’s apparent efforts to wear down domestic Russian support for the war.

Following the raids all four Moscow airports temporarily suspended flight operations. At least 11 passenger flights were redirected to alternate airports, causing disruption, state news agency TASS reported citing the Federal Air Transport Agency. Later updates indicated that the airports resumed normal operations.

The governor of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine, said air defenses thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on a television tower early on Wednesday. Aleksandr Bogomaz said a fire had been extinguished and emergency services were working at the site of the alleged attack.

The wave of strikes came hours after the governor of Russia’s southwestern Bryansk region said that the Ukrainian military had fired at the village of Klimovo with multiple launch rocket systems, and claimed an unspecified number of deaths.

An airport in Russia’s western city of Pskov, used for both civilian and military aircraft, also came under drone attacks late on Tuesday, according to the region’s governor.

Mikhail Vedernikov posted a video showing what appears to be a large plume of smoke coming from behind buildings in what looks like a residential area. Russian state news agency TASS reported that “as a result of drone attacks four Il-76 aircraft were damaged,” in Pskov. A fire broke out and two aircraft were engulfed in flames, TASS said, citing emergency services.

Flights over Pskov and the region were restricted, TASS added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attributed the increase in drone attacks on Russia to what he called the “continued terrorist activity of the Kyiv regime,” and said Russian President Vladimir Putin is receiving “timely and up-to-date information” on all developments.

Fierce fighting and sluggish movement is meanwhile continuing in the ground war. Ukraine stepped up its evacuations of children from the frontline town of Kupiansk on Tuesday, as Russian forces continued to bear down on the battered city.

Kupiansk lies in northeastern Ukraine, more then 200 miles from the southern front, where Ukrainian troops are making slow progress in their counter-offensive. The dueling theaters of fighting may indicate an attempt by each side to draw opposition troops away from their primary targets.

The Ukrainian military says that its forces have made further progress in a part of the southern front, towards the villages of Novodanylivka and Verbove. If successful in the Verbove area, the Ukrainians would widen a wedge of territory they have taken as they push south towards the strategic hub of Tokmak, which is occupied by the Russians.

archive link: https://archive.is/7AoIf

• Defence researchers say sensors can identify extremely small surface vibrations produced by a low-frequency sound source in the open sea
• UAV-mounted platform could work in concert with other submarine detection methods such as a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), microwave radar or laser

China has tested the world’s first submarine-detecting device based on next-generation communication technology, according to researchers.

The terahertz device identified extremely small surface vibrations produced by a low-frequency sound source in the open sea, scientists involved in the experiment said.

These ripples were as tiny as 10 nanometres tall, well below the detection range of existing technology.

Tracking and analysing these waves can not only help find the submarine but also gather critical intelligence, such as noise signature or the submarine model, according to the researchers.

The technology “will have significant application potential in underwater vessel detection and other areas”, said the project team with the National University of Defence Technology. Their work was published on August 11 in the Journal of Radars, a Chinese-language peer-reviewed journal.

Terahertz is a frequency range between microwave and infrared radiation. Terahertz technology has been proposed as a potential solution for achieving high data rates and low latency for the next generation of communication technology, or 6G.

Electromagnetic signals in this range not only carry a lot more information than existing communication methods but can collect information about the environment. Some airports in China, for instance, use terahertz screening devices to detect illegal items concealed under passenger’s clothes.

Generating powerful terahertz signals used to be difficult but thanks to an increasing investment in 6G in recent years, scientists in China and other countries have achieved breakthroughs that make mass application of the technology possible.

And advances mean the terahertz submarine detector could be small enough to mount on a drone, according to the Chinese team.

“A small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform has the advantage of good mobility, low cost and flexible deployment,” they said in the paper.

And it could work in concert with other submarine detection methods such as a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), microwave radar or laser.

“As a supplement to existing detection methods, it can provide important information for the detection and identification of submarines,” they added.

The paper did not state when the experiment was conducted, but said it was at an unspecified location off the northeastern city of Dalian in the Yellow Sea. At the time of the test, the weather was fair but breaking waves produced lots of bubbles, according to their paper.

The military scientists used an artificial sound source to simulate the noise emitted by a submarine. To mimic drone flight, the submarine detector was carried by an extended arm of a research ship.

When a submarine is travelling at high speed, “it produces significant radiated noise that propagates to the water surface and excites surface vibration”, the researchers said.

But the disturbance is extremely weak by the time it reaches the surface. Separating it from the natural waves of the ocean was previously thought impossible.

In the test, the terahertz sensor picked up man-made ripples with amplitude ranging from 10 to 100 nanometres, depending on the sea conditions.

The team said the result was a miracle of both hardware and software.

The terahertz waves’ high frequency made it ultra-sensitive. The Chinese scientists say they have also developed the world’s first algorithm that can effectively identify nanometre-size ripples over the wobbling ocean.

The same technology could be used in submarine communication, they said.

A submarine sometimes needs to establish contact with friendly aircraft to coordinate their movements in a large-scale military operation. The captain could encode messages in surface vibrations too small to be detected by enemy forces.

“By detecting acoustically induced surface vibration signals, it is possible to invert the information conveyed by underwater sound sources,” the team said.

The sea test results suggested the terahertz technology “has high signal resolution” for cross-medium communication, which remains a challenge to naval powers, they said.

The 6G technology has been used in separate close-range communication experiments between water and the air, which had also produced successful outcomes, they said.

https://archive.is/CufZd

Warmer winters, late freezes and wildly variable rainfall have formed a perfect storm to wreck the one of the region’s favorite fruits

Farming is inherently risky, a profession that always involves an expectation of loss and damage. But among many farmers, peaches are considered an unpredictable crop, with high risks and high rewards.

“Farming peaches is like gambling in a casino,” said 44-year-old Robert Jackson II, of Lyman, South Carolina. The fruit bruises easily and is vulnerable to weather changes, but can earn handsome profits.

He and his 70-year-old father, also named Robert Jackson, live and work on a 33-acre farm where peaches are their main revenue stream. “One day, everything could be fine, and then the next day, you could have nothing.”

That’s been the case for many South Carolina growers, who produce more of the fruit than the neighboring “Peach State”, Georgia. This year, a late freeze destroyed about 70% of the state’s harvest. This year’s disaster followed the previous year’s disruption, another freeze that put a major dent in peach growers’ pockets and prospects.

As southern peach season draws to a close, farmers worry that climate change threatens the long-term survival of an industry that is an economic powerhouse and deeply tied to regional identity. What apple pie is to America, the peach has arguably become to many people in the south. From Charleston to Greenville, South Carolina, roadside stands advertise peach ice cream, and small Gaffney, South Carolina, has a 135ft peach-shaped water tower.

But this year, peaches have been scarce. At an Asheville, North Carolina, farmers’ market where most of the peaches come from South Carolina, fewer peaches were on offer. When they were available, they were more expensive: a half-bushel could cost as much as $60. “Still, every peach sold in a blink of an eye,” said Ellerslie McCue, marketing coordinator for the WNC Farmers Market.

In 2022, Jackson Farms picked 2,200 half bushels of peaches. This year, it only yielded 110 half bushels. Typically, the farm would have enough peaches to sell wholesale, as many peach farmers do with excess crop. This year it only produced enough to sell at the family’s roadside stand and local farmers’ markets.

“We didn’t think the temperature was going to drop as cold as it did,” he said. “But 2 or 3 degrees is the difference between success and failure with peaches.”

Peaches are notoriously difficult to farm, both labor-intensive and sensitive to minor fluctuations in weather. During the fall and winter, peach trees enter a dormant period. Depending on the variety, the tree needs a specific number of “chilling” hours during this time – basically, hours spent at temperatures between 32 and 45F. During this season, peach trees are pretty hardy and resilient to freezes. Once the weather warms, the trees begin flowering and eventually producing fruit. But, at that point, the tree and its fruits are a lot more vulnerable to cold and destructive weather, such as hail.

“This year is probably the worst year in my 38 years of working,” said Dr Gregory Rieghard, professor of horticulture and member of the Peach Breeding Lab at Clemson University. He estimated that Georgia lost even more of its crop than South Carolina, keeping only 5% of its peaches.

Rieghard said climate change is jeopardizing peach growing.

“What people don’t realize is that when you have warmer temperatures in the Pacific, that warmth moves towards the Arctic and displaces the cold air that is there and pushes it down into North America. So we have an increased risk of these late freezes due to polar vortexes.”

Frequent late spring freezes combine with warmer winters and irregular rainfall to make a perfect storm for crop destruction. As global temperatures rise, peach trees are not always getting those necessary “chilling” hours. Warmer air also holds more moisture. It might rain less frequently, but when it does rain, there often is a lot more of it. Both drought and torrential downpours can wreck a season.

Rachel McCormick’s family has owned McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina, for five generations and currently plants 1,000 acres of peaches. Her father, Kemp McLeod, “calls the National Weather [Service] phone number all the time. I think they have him on caller ID,” she said.

The period of regular freezes this year was a “long three weeks” for the family. But they fared better than many farmers, retaining most of their crop. Some of it was the luck of geography. McBee, situated in the state’s Sandhills region, didn’t get as intense of a freeze as more southern and western parts of the state.

McLeod Farms also invested heavily in protecting its peaches. Workers burned bales of straw around the periphery of the farm at night and ran dozens of wind machines, circulating warm air around the trees.

Wind machines are among a handful of tools that can protect peaches in the face of a freeze. Rieghard’s lab at Clemson is also working on breeding new varieties of peaches that bloom later in the spring at higher temperatures. For the farmers themselves, there is crop insurance, which can provide some financial protection. Jackson didn’t get crop insurance until after the 2017 freeze when the US Department of Agriculture provided disaster relief to peach farmers. That vital cash subsidized the cost of crop insurance, which can be prohibitively expensive.

Despite this, many peach farmers remain steadfast in their commitment to growing peaches. Risk sometimes comes with gain. Rieghard noted peaches often return higher investment than row crops; in South Carolina, 15,500 acres of peaches generate over $98m, to the tune of more than $6,000 an acre.

“Honestly, if 100% of our crop came, we wouldn’t know what to do,” joked McCormick. Her family farm expects to lose at least 20% of its crop per season. As it stands, she’s currently filling out the paperwork to bring the usual cohort of migrant workers over through H-2A visas to work 2024’s crop. She doesn’t expect the more frequent freezes will change her family’s commitment to peaches.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the peach industry this year because we were hit so hard, but I hope it has brought awareness to how this supply chain works and how environmental and economic elements can affect an industry,” she said.

For Jackson, the peach failure is a loss, but his family balances that part of their business with off-farm jobs and other crops.

“We still have the vegetables and watermelon and blackberries to save us. My dad says if you ever lose a blackberry crop, then there’s not gonna be anything because blackberries are the most resilient.” For now, the blackberries are fine.

But as they look ahead to the next year, Jackson said the family will plant more peach trees, as well as looking at investing in a wind machine. They also will prepare to burn frost-preventing “smudge pots” if another freeze occurs. “If you save one crop of peaches, it pays for itself,” Jackson said.

Besides, the work is also a payoff. “I love what I am doing, and I like the lifestyle of farming,” said Jackson.

His father originally owned a farm in South Carolina in the 1980s. After three freezes in a row, the elder Jackson declared bankruptcy and moved to Connecticut to work on an apple orchard, then a vegetable operation. But working for others dissatisfied him, and he returned to South Carolina and bought land to begin farming again.

Today, the younger Jackson’s kids roam the farm and pick fruits at will, just like he did as a youngster. So even if the peach industry is risky, it feels worthwhile to him.

“Everyone needs to taste the fruits grown right next to where they live, then they’ll understand.”

Still, he said, most people would do better putting their money into the stock market instead of a peach farm.

archive link: https://archive.is/7inpA

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said hospitalizations rose yet again last week by another 19%. Deaths from the virus also saw a large jump: 21% in one week.

The summer surge in COVID-19 spread could extend into fall. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said hospitalizations rose yet again last week by another 19%. Deaths from the virus also saw a large jump: 21% in one week.

The spread of the virus appears to be a problem just about everywhere. Only a few states – Alaska, New Hampshire and North Dakota – saw COVID-related hospital admissions drop last week.

The other 47 states saw hospitalizations remain stable or increase. More than half of states – 26 to be exact – experienced a “substantial increase” in people being admitted with COVID-19, the CDC said.

A “substantial” jump, shaded in dark orange on the CDC map below, occurs when new hospital admissions increase by more than 20% in a single week.
https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/ChangeinCOVID19NewHospitalAdmissionsfromPriorWeekbyStateTerritoryUnitedStates.png
Twenty-six states had a 20% or larger increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations week over week, the CDC said on August 28, 2023. (Map: CDC)

The biggest spike was in South Dakota, where hospitalizations increased by more than 127% in a single week, according to CDC tracking.

Help is on the way in the form of a new booster shot targeting a recent strain of the omicron variant – but it’s not expected to be approved until the end of September.

In the meantime, things might get worse as students head back to classrooms and dorm rooms.

“Overall, I would expect cases and hospitalizations to increase – then decrease again before they rise in the late fall and early winter,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, when asked about back-to-school season’s impact on COVID spread.

“This has been the pattern for the past three years and may be where COVID may settle to: a smaller swell in the summer and a larger increase in cases in the late fall and winter,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC are expected to give more information on who can get the new booster shot and when.

archive link: https://archive.is/Xp7gu

Bill Gates discussed the importance of plant-based meat alternatives with Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson on the latest episode of his podcast, "Unconfuse Me."

Bill Gates has spent years, and billions of dollars, working to combat climate change.

The billionaire’s foundation has invested vast sums in various climate tech solutions while regularly raising the alarm about the leading contributors to climate change, like the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from major energy and manufacturing companies burning fossil fuels at prodigious rates.

But, according to Gates, most people are still unaware of the role played by one of the biggest contributors to climate change: agriculture, specifically methane emissions from livestock and fertilizers.

“Of all the climate areas, the one that people are probably least aware of is all the fertilizer and cows, and that’s a challenge,” Gates recently said on the latest episode of his podcast, “Unconfuse Me.”

The topic came up because Gates was in conversation with musician and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who, like Gates, also happens to be an early investor in several plant-based food startups, such as Impossible, NotCo and Neutral Foods.

Thompson, who is from Philadelphia, even recently partnered with Impossible to create a plant-based cheesesteak that counts former president Barack Obama as a fan, he told Gates.

Thompson told Gates he was won over by plant-based foods’ ability to mimic the taste of real meat, among other products: “Something told me plant-based is going to be the future … and I want to be the person that plants the seed,” he said.

While plant-based foods have won support from those looking for alternatives to products made from animals, Gates said that he started backing plant-based food ventures because of their potential to combat climate change.

“I came to it more from that climate angle,” he said.

Gates has pointed out in the past that the agricultural industry contributes roughly 24% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that stemming from methane emissions from livestock and fertilizer used to cultivate crops, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In fact, if cattle “were a country,” Gates wrote in 2018, “they would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases [in the world].”

In his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Gates wrote that effectively combating climate change will take people being willing to commit to new ideas, like switching to electric cars and synthetic meats.

That same year, Gates argued that wealthy countries that have the resources to do so “should move to 100% synthetic beef” in order to meaningfully reduce global emissions from livestock, he told the MIT Technology Review.

“You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” he said at the time. “Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”

Plant-based meat sales still represent just a small percentage of the total meat market, and even Gates admits it will be difficult to convince enough people to stop eating real meat to make a significant difference.

One issue is that the still relatively new products are currently more expensive than real meats. Still, Gates has a positive outlook that plant-based meat companies will continue to improve their products, and reduce their costs, helping them to eventually become more popular.

That’s why Gates and his foundation have financially backed plant-based and lab-grown meat startups such as Impossible, Beyond Meat, Neutral Foods and Upside Foods. Speaking to Thompson about the plant-based meat startups, like Impossible, Gates said that “they’re doing well, but a lot of people want him to make [the product] even slightly better.”

“They have a good roadmap, so I’m optimistic,” he said.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/F9QpM

Bill Gates discussed the importance of plant-based meat alternatives with Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson on the latest episode of his podcast, "Unconfuse Me."

Bill Gates has spent years, and billions of dollars, working to combat climate change.

The billionaire’s foundation has invested vast sums in various climate tech solutions while regularly raising the alarm about the leading contributors to climate change, like the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from major energy and manufacturing companies burning fossil fuels at prodigious rates.

But, according to Gates, most people are still unaware of the role played by one of the biggest contributors to climate change: agriculture, specifically methane emissions from livestock and fertilizers.

“Of all the climate areas, the one that people are probably least aware of is all the fertilizer and cows, and that’s a challenge,” Gates recently said on the latest episode of his podcast, “Unconfuse Me.”

The topic came up because Gates was in conversation with musician and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who, like Gates, also happens to be an early investor in several plant-based food startups, such as Impossible, NotCo and Neutral Foods.

Thompson, who is from Philadelphia, even recently partnered with Impossible to create a plant-based cheesesteak that counts former president Barack Obama as a fan, he told Gates.

Thompson told Gates he was won over by plant-based foods’ ability to mimic the taste of real meat, among other products: “Something told me plant-based is going to be the future … and I want to be the person that plants the seed,” he said.

While plant-based foods have won support from those looking for alternatives to products made from animals, Gates said that he started backing plant-based food ventures because of their potential to combat climate change.

“I came to it more from that climate angle,” he said.

Gates has pointed out in the past that the agricultural industry contributes roughly 24% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that stemming from methane emissions from livestock and fertilizer used to cultivate crops, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In fact, if cattle “were a country,” Gates wrote in 2018, “they would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases [in the world].”

In his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Gates wrote that effectively combating climate change will take people being willing to commit to new ideas, like switching to electric cars and synthetic meats.

That same year, Gates argued that wealthy countries that have the resources to do so “should move to 100% synthetic beef” in order to meaningfully reduce global emissions from livestock, he told the MIT Technology Review.

“You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” he said at the time. “Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”

Plant-based meat sales still represent just a small percentage of the total meat market, and even Gates admits it will be difficult to convince enough people to stop eating real meat to make a significant difference.

One issue is that the still relatively new products are currently more expensive than real meats. Still, Gates has a positive outlook that plant-based meat companies will continue to improve their products, and reduce their costs, helping them to eventually become more popular.

That’s why Gates and his foundation have financially backed plant-based and lab-grown meat startups such as Impossible, Beyond Meat, Neutral Foods and Upside Foods. Speaking to Thompson about the plant-based meat startups, like Impossible, Gates said that “they’re doing well, but a lot of people want him to make [the product] even slightly better.”

“They have a good roadmap, so I’m optimistic,” he said.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/F9QpM