Decades after the US buried nuclear waste abroad, climate change could unearth it – Grist Magazine
A new report says melting ice sheets and rising seas could disturb waste from U.S. nuclear projects in Greenland and the Marshall Islands…The report summarizes disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the U.S. Department of Energy regarding the risks posed by U.S. nuclear waste. The GAO recommends that the agency adopt a communications strategy for conveying information about the potential for pollution to the Marshallese people.
Category 6-level hurricanes are already here, a new study says – Grist Magazine
In the real world, Category 5 is synonymous with the biggest and baddest storms. But some U.S. scientists are making the case that it no longer captures the intensity of recent hurricanes. A paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lays out a framework for extending the current hurricane-rating system…with a new category for storms that have winds topping 192 miles per hour. According to the study, the world has already seen storms that would qualify as Category 6s…
Plastic bag bans have already prevented billions of bags from being used, report finds – Grist
“The bottom line is that plastic bag bans work,” said Faye Park, president of the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, in a statement. “People realize quickly it’s easy to live without plastic bags and get used to bringing a bag from home or skipping a bag when they can…”
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction – Grist Magazine
Grist’s Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors short story contest celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. From 1,000 submissions, our reviewers and judges selected the three winners and nine finalists you will discover in this collection. These stories are not afraid to explore the challenges ahead, but offer hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world….
Inside the Marshall Islands’ life-or-death plan to survive climate change – Grist Magazine
The Pacific island nation is seeking $35 billion to protect against sea-level rise and prevent a mass exodus…“We call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really our survival plan,” said John Silk, the foreign minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands…
Plastic credits are supposed to support new cleanup projects. Do they? – Grist
Critics say they won’t work, for one of the same reasons carbon credits haven’t…
From Jane to the Octonauts, Children’s TV is Taking on the Climate Crisis – Grist Magazine
Olivia Dreizen Howell wasn’t seeking out a climate lesson when she and her kids, aged 7 and 9, tuned into Molly of Denali, a popular children’s show on PBS. But there it was: Molly, a 10-year-old Alaska Native and vlogger from the fictional village of Qyah, goes with her friends to visit an old clubhouse. Upon arriving, they find it has begun to sink into the ground. The episode, “Not So Permafrost,” follows Molly as she uncovers why her refuge is sinking in the first place. It served as an unexpected opening for Dreizen Howell and her family to discuss the climate crisis…
Hip hop has been a climate voice for 50 years. Why haven’t more people noticed? – Grist Magazine
“People have spent time bobbing their heads to our stories of this despair and not seeing it as a call to action…”
Hip hop’s relationship to the environment, both in terms of lyrics and political activism, goes back to its very beginning, when smoke from apartment fires blackened the skies of the 1970s South Bronx. And yet its role in advocating for climate solutions has largely gone unnoticed…
Using ‘recycled plastic’ in construction materials may not be a great idea after all – Grist Magazine
Last month, the American Chemistry Council, a petrochemical industry trade group, sent out a newsletter highlighting a major new report on what it presented as a promising solution to the plastic pollution crisis: using “recycled” plastic in construction materials. At first blush, it might seem like a pretty good idea — shred discarded plastic into tiny pieces and you can reprocess it into everything from roads and bridges to railroad ties…