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This website is authored by Lester Levy, Esq.
a founding member of JAMS.

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You are here: Home / Archives for Environmental ADR Editor

The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change

July 6, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

intergenerational-theft-Brexit-climate-changeIn last week’s Brexit vote results, there was a tremendous divide between age groups. 73% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain in the EU, while about 58% over the age of 45 voted to leave.

This generational gap is among the many parallels between Brexit and climate change. A 2014 poll found that 74% of Americans under the age of 30 support government policies to cut carbon pollution, as compared to just 58% of respondents over the age of 40, and 52% over the age of 65.

Inter-generational theft
The problem is of course that younger generations will have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make today for much longer than older generations. Older generations in developed countries prospered as a result of the burning of fossil fuels for seemingly cheap energy.

However, we’ve already reached the point where even contrarian economists agree, any further global warming we experience will be detrimental for the global economy. For poorer countries, we passed that point decades ago. A new paper examining climate costs and fossil fuel industry profits for the years 2008–2012 found:

“For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after‐tax profit, with the single exception of Exxon Mobil in 2008.”

And as political journalist Nicholas Barrett said in a comment that subsequently went viral:

“The younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.”

Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. Read More

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: Brexit, climate change, EU

Our Drinking Water Regulation Is So Weak Even Flint’s Water Got A Pass

July 6, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

drinking-water-regulationWASHINGTON — Federal drinking water rules are so relaxed that not even the city of Flint, Michigan, has been cited for a violation, even though many Flint residents have been relying on bottled water for drinking and cooking since last year.

The Natural Resources Defense Council said Tuesday that 18 million Americans got water from systems that violated federal standards last year, according to federal data.

And the environmental advocacy group said an untold number of water systems break the rules without landing in the Environmental Protection Agency’s database of water regulation goofs — including Flint.

“Flint’s absence in the federal data system raises the question: If Flint’s extraordinary lead contamination problems are not included in the EPA’s official compliance data,” the NRDC’s report says, “how many other municipalities’ serious lead problems are being swept under the rug by officials responsible for protecting public health?”

An EPA spokeswoman noted it’s up to states to notify the agency of drinking water violations by municipal water systems.

“EPA recognizes there are ongoing challenges in compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule and is working closely with states, who under the Safe Drinking Water Act are the first line of oversight of drinking water systems and take the majority of enforcement actions,” the spokeswoman said in an email. The Lead and Copper Rule is the main federal regulation for limiting lead levels in public drinking water. Read More

 

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: EPA, Flint, water contamintation

Leaving the EU would put our environment at risk

June 3, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

Leaving-EU-environment-riskOn Thursday the Prime Minister will make the environmental case for Britain’s place in Europe. He is right to bring this important issue to the top of his agenda.

How nature is managed and protected affects us all, and the outcome of the EU referendum will have profound implications for the future of our countryside, wildlife, rivers and seas.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) will not be telling people how to vote, and we recognise that voters will be weighing up a range of issues when casting their votes on June 23.

But our supporters, staff and volunteers all share a concern for nature – David Cameron’s intervention should encourage everyone to put environmental considerations at the heart of the referendum debate.

The evidence shows that the EU, and the UK’s membership of it, has on balance had a positive impact on the environment in the UK, across Europe and indeed globally – from protecting forests and wildlife and preserving rare species to improving air and water quality, and cutting global emissions.

EU standards have safeguarded streams and rivers that are home to much-loved British wildlife such as water voles, kingfishers, brown trout, otters and the bittern. They have helped protect and restore precious heaths and woodlands that are essential for butterflies and bees. Read More

Read the entire article at The Telegraph.

This was originally published on The Telegraph written by David Nussbaum.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: Brexit, climate change, environment, EU Referendum

A Place Where Lightning Strikes Almost 300 Days a Year

June 3, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

Venezuela-lightening-strikesThey call it “the Never-Ending Storm of Catatumbo,” or “Maracaibo’s Lighthouse.” Its lightning is so familiar, people in the state of Zulia in Venezuela even put it on their flag.

Less than half an hour after the first cloud forms, it starts to flash. It does this faster and faster — 200 flashes a minute is not uncommon. After that, the cloud becomes a giant bulb that lights up the night.

“You can read a newspaper in the middle of the night because it’s so bright,” said Jonas Pointek, a photographer who has documented the storms.

Locals in the area known as Lake Maracaibo, by the Catatumbo River in Venezuela, can expect a display of this sort during more than 80 percent of the year, mainly from April to November — an average of 297 days, to be exact, according to an analysis published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

This was enough that NASA has declared the area the lightning capital of the world, dethroning Africa’s Congo Basin. The reason for the change: Sixteen years worth of data from the lightning sensors on a satellite allowed the team to analyze the numbers with unprecedented precision.

“Storm chasers have to drive down highways or up mountains,” said Alan Highton, of Catatumbo Camp, who has specialized in lightning tourism in the area for eight years. “But the unique thing about the Catatumbo is you can just sit there at our camp, drink a cold beer, and the storms will come to you.” He says the prettiest storms come in November, and according to the data, they peak in September. Read More

Read the entire article at The New York Times.

This was originally published on The New York Times written by Joanna Klein.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: climate change, environment, lightening, storm chasers

Oil company records from 1960s reveal patents to reduce CO2 emissions in cars

June 3, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

oil-company-reduce-CO2The forerunners of ExxonMobil patented technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles as early as 1963 – even as the oil industry lobby tried to squash government funding for such research, according to a trove of newly discovered records.

Patent records reveal oil companies actively pursued research into technologies to cut carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change from the 1960s – including early versions of the batteries now deployed to power electric cars such as the Tesla.

Scientists for the companies patented technologies to strip carbon dioxide out of exhaust pipes, and improve engine efficiency, as well as fuel cells. They also conducted research into countering the rise in carbon dioxide emissions – including manipulating the weather.

Esso, one of the precursors of ExxonMobil, obtained at least three fuel cell patents in the 1960s and another for a low-polluting vehicle in 1970, according to the records. Other oil companies such as Phillips and Shell also patented technologies for more efficient uses of fuel.

However, the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil lobby, opposed government funding of research into electric cars and low emissions vehicles, telling Congress in 1967: “We take exception to the basic assumption that clean air can be achieved only by finding an alternative to the internal combustion engine.” Read More

Read the entire article at The Guardian.

This article was originally published on The Guardian written by Suzanne Goldenberg.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: carbon dioxide, climate change, energy, environment

CH2M and IBM have a fix for our water systems disaster

May 4, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

CH2M-IBM-fix- water-systems-disasterPeople in developed countries turn on the tap and safe drinking water flows, a dramatic health benefit they tend to take for granted. That complacency dramatically was disrupted last year when children in Flint, Michigan, started testing positive for lead poisoning and the source was traced to tap water.

But Flint shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise; in fact, water industry professionals have been sounding the alert for years.

Much of the water infrastructure in the developed world was built 70 to 100 years ago and is nearing the end of its useful life. The American Water Works Association said we have entered “the replacement era,” in which we must rebuild “the water and wastewater systems bequeathed to us by earlier generations.” Most pipes, depending on their materials and the environment in which they reside, have a lifespan of 60 to 95 years. Treatment plants’ mechanical and electric components can serve 15 to 25 years. Without prompt upgrades, we are likely to see deteriorating water quality, with more incidents of lead or arsenic poisoning and bacterial and viral contamination, and increasing numbers of leaks disrupting water service and leading to costly emergency repairs.

In 2013 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. drinking water system a grade of D. Across the United States, 240,000 water mains burst a year, or about one every two minutes. Every year, more than 41 billion cubic yards of treated water are lost to leaks around the world — enough water to serve almost 400 million people, according to the World Bank. And although drinking water in the United States remains quite safe overall, contamination with bacteria or viruses regularly makes people sick. In 2011–2012, the nation saw 32 drinking water–associated disease outbreaks, causing 431 cases of illness and 14 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Upgrading the more than 1 million miles of drinking water pipes in the U.S. — along with other water infrastructure — and expanding systems to meet the needs of a growing population is projected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 25 years, according to the AWWA. Although the financial investment required is mind-boggling, putting off upgrades can mean degraded water quality from leaky pipes or outdated treatment facilities, service interruptions and even higher costs: It’s much cheaper to prevent a leak than to fix water damage afterward in moldy buildings or buckled roads.

To perform targeted triage, new technologies — sensors, smart meters and data management platforms — are helping water managers to make informed decisions about how to allocate precious funds and stay ahead of problems.

“We preach asset management. Don’t just replace x percent of pipes a year,” said Tommy Holmes, legislative director of AWWA. “Do an analysis of your system and choose which 2 percent of pipes need to be replaced, rather than just focusing on a geographic area. You want to replace pipes on the verge of failure first.” Read More

Read the entire article at GreenBiz

This was originally published on GreenBiz written by Erica Gies

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: data, infrastructure, technology, water

UK farmers to test hi-tech beans that could prevent food waste

May 4, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

UK- farmers-hitech-beans-prevent- food-wasteWhen it comes to the internet of things (IoT), the fanfare is often around items like fridges, cars, and entire skyscrapers. But one entrepreneur is thinking small, producing highly-connected devices the size of a bean.

BeanIoT is the brainchild of tech veteran Andrew Holland, who says that the size and shape of a bean (roughly 45mm by 18mm) makes it ideal as a versatile, low-profile monitoring device. Picture a bean in your pocket while you work out, assessing your progress and vital signs without a clunky wrist device. In an assisted living facility, beans could monitor whether residents had fallen or were in medical distress. Or in a grain silo, strategically scattered beans could assess temperature, moisture and CO2, to gauge potential problem areas before they develop.

By late summer this year, the BeanIoT prototypes will be placed in silos around Cambridgeshire, where Holland’s company RFMOD is headquartered. Holland has chosen agriculture as the tester partly because Cambridgeshire is a large grain-producing area and his brother is a farmer, but he also believes farmers make the ideal test market.

“Farmers are some of the most practical people in the world,” says Holland. “They aren’t going to invest in anything unless they can see a clear return on investment. They’ll be the perfect judges.” Depending on how the testing goes, Holland wants the product to hit the market in the next three to five years.

The idea arrives as big data becomes an area of focus in agriculture. Companies like Monsanto are investing in tech that can monitor soil quality or climatic shifts with remarkable levels of precision. According to Holland, silo technology currently involves monitoring devices hanging from wires. The wireless systems that do exist are costly, running into thousands of dollars, and therefore often beyond the reach of smaller growers. The final goal is to get each BeanIoT costing less than $30 (£20). Read More

Read the entire article at The Gaurdian

This was originally published on The Gaurdian written by Jesse Hirsch

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: agriculture, big data, environmental technology

The Case for Farmed Fish

May 4, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

The Case for Farmed Fish: Aquaculture could help save wild fisheries from devastation.

farmed-fishIt’s time to take a second look at fish farms. Environmentalists, not to mention foodies, tend to turn up their noses at fish farms.  It’s true that badly managed fish farms can be a source of water pollution and other environmental problems.  But sustainable fish farming would have major environmental benefits.To begin with, fish farming provides an alternative that may reduce pressures on wild fish stocks. Fish are a major source of protein in many parts of the world, and the result has been massive damage to wild fisheries and ecosystems.  But fish farming is a growing alternative.

In 2012, fish farming produced ninety million tons of fish at a value of $144 billion, and the amount continues to rise, with China as the largest producer. The World Bank projects that farmed fish could provide an increased role in providing protein to the also-increased world mid-century population.  For that reasons, a substantial expansion of sustainable aquaculture (primarily of herbivorous fish) could reduce pressure on wild stocks and could potentially also reduce demand for other forms of animal protein such as beef.

In terms of the United States, the food guideline advisory group found that expanding aquaculture can provide sufficient seafood to comply with dietary guidelines. The advisory group called for sustainable productivity gains while maintaining the high nutrition level of wild seafood.  In addition, they concluded, “farm-raised finfish (e.g., salmon and trout) is more sustainable than terrestrial animal production (e.g., beef and pork) in terms of GHG emissions and land/water use.”

Environmentally, there’s no free lunch.  People need protein, and the main sources are (1) meat and other products from farm animals, (2) soybeans and other legumes, and (3) fish.  None of these sources is free of environmental risks.  But fish are a healthier and potentially more sustainable source than farm animals, and farmed fish may have fewer environmental costs than wild ones.  We shouldn’t let our sense that fish farming is “unnatural” get in the way of environmentally sensible choices. Read More

Read the entire article at Legal Planet

This was originally published on Legal Planet written by Dan Farber

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: Bio diversity, farmed fish, green living, oceans

The Next Water Crisis Is Looming—How Can Tech Help?

April 14, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

Next-Water-Crisis-LoomingHave you ever wondered if the water in your house is safe to drink? While many have been angered by the news that children in Flint, Michigan were exposed to abnormally high amounts of lead in their drinking water, clean water is actually a problem for millions of Americans.

Chicago is busy replacing 900 miles of hundred-year-old, potentially hazardous lead pipes, while Fresno is dealing with cancer causing chemicals in wells.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates US water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life and will need to be replaced, probably costing around a trillion dollars. And the Environmental Protection Agency estimates 16% of water is lost every year through old systems and that over the next 20 years water system upgrades will be a $200 billion market.

And of course, clean water is not only a US problem. Far from it.

Over 663 million people lack access to clean water worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 1.6 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases due to a lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation. Ninety percent of those who die are children under five, the majority living in developing countries.

Water is not only essential for sanitation, drinking, and cooking but necessary for agriculture, industrial activities, recreation and healthy environmental ecosystems.

As the world’s population continues to grow and urbanize, and as the climate changes, the International Food Research Institute predicts that by 2050 more than 4.8 billion people and half the world’s global grain production will be at risk due to water stress.

Where access to this most valuable of resources is contested, conflict ensues. From Syria and Iraq to Peru and the Ukraine, water continues to play a pivotal and increasing role in conflict, and water-related conflicts have significantly escalated since the turn of the millennium.

The irony about the global water challenge is that we live on a planet awash in water, yet we can only utilize a tiny fraction of it in the form of accessible fresh water.

That’s where we believe new technology and innovation can help. Read More

Read the entire article at SingularityHub.

This was originally published on SingularityHub written by Darlene Damm and Nicholas Hann.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: environment, EPA, global water challenge, technology, water contamintation

Water Is Broken. Data Can Fix It.

March 28, 2016 by Environmental ADR Editor Leave a Comment

Water Is Broken Data Can Fix It

Water Is Broken Data Can Fix It

AS a nation, we have become disciples of data. We interview 60,000 families a month to determine the unemployment rate, we monitor how much energy we use every seven days, Amazon ranks sales of every book it sells every hour.

Then there is water.

Water may be the most important item in our lives, our economy and our landscape about which we know the least. We not only don’t tabulate our water use every hour or every day, we don’t do it every month, or even every year.

The official analysis of water use in the United States is done every five years. It takes a tiny team of people four years to collect, tabulate and release the data. In November 2014, the United States Geological Survey issued its most current comprehensive analysis of United States water use — for the year 2010.

The 2010 report runs 64 pages of small type, reporting water use in each state by quality and quantity, by source, and by whether it’s used on farms, in factories or in homes.

It doesn’t take four years to get five years of data. All we get every five years is one year of data.

The data system is ridiculously primitive. It was an embarrassment even two decades ago. The vast gaps — we start out missing 80 percent of the picture — mean that from one side of the continent to the other, we’re making decisions blindly.

n just the past 27 months, there have been a string of high-profile water crises — poisoned water in Flint, Mich.; polluted water in Toledo, Ohio, andCharleston, W. Va.; the continued drying of the Colorado River basin — that have undermined confidence in our ability to manage water.

In the time it took to compile the 2010 report, Texas endured a four-year drought. California settled into what has become a five-year drought. The most authoritative water-use data from across the West couldn’t be less helpful: It’s from the year before the droughts began.

Read the entire article at the New York Times.

This article was originally published in the New York Times written by Charles Fishman.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: data analysis, eco-friendly, EPA, Flint, water, water summit

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lester-levy

I strongly believe in the value of mediation – said another way, environmental mediation really works. I would go even further: I believe that environmental disputes are perfectly suited to the mediation process – perhaps more so than any other area of legal practice. I have formed these views after mediating environmental cases for more than 20 years, throughout the United States, and having worked with thousands of lawyers, companies, insurance carriers, regulatory agencies and courts. My … Read more

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