Happy Friday everyone!  And happy Autumn as well! In this month's edition, we are kicking it off in search of new featured writers to share their stories with us - who knows, maybe we'll be talking about you in this intro next month! Next up, we have our monthly headlines, including some climate tipping points and a look at the actual cost of carbon pollution. Last up, we start off the 21st century of climate policy in our education section. Enjoy the read!

Rooftop Solar in Lawrence, MA / Image courtesy of Nick Moore

Featured Writer

We want you (yes, you!) to be our next featured writer!  We started ClimateRoots so that we could connect and extend a community of people that have a passion and care for our environment, and nobody embodies that quite like our featured writers.

Have you done something related to the environment, climate change, social justice, or anything in between? We want to hear about it! Click the button below and let's grow this community, together!

Weekly Headlines

World Warming on Course to Trigger Multiple Climate Tipping Points, Study Warns (Science, The Guardian, NPR)

• Climate tipping points, or events that cannot be undone once their thresholds have been passed, are triggered once global warming crosses a certain increase.

• Based on current policies, we are on track to warm the Earth by 2-3 degrees Celsius and have already reached 1 degree Celsius.

• After only 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, we can expect tipping points such as the Greenland ice sheet collapse, West Antarctic ice sheet collapse, Tropical coral reef die-off, and abrupt permafrost thaw. Check the links above for a full list of climate tipping points.

Glaciers Continue to Melt at Record Pace Worldwide (USA Today, Washington Post, Associated Press, Nature Geoscience, ClimateSignals)

• The Swiss Alps’ glaciers lost 6% of their total volume this year, more than double any other year’s ice loss in over a century.

• Elsewhere, the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to melt at a rapid pace as it lost more ice last month than any other September on record. This comes after a Summer in which Greenland lost more ice in one weekend than ever before.

• On top of these events, new research has shown that the Thwaites Glacier, an Antarctic glacier that holds enough water to single handedly raise ocean levels by multiple feet, is even less stable than previously expected.

• Glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are important climate indicators. Their increased melting is caused by warming air and water temperatures.

The Economic Cost of Carbon Pollution is much Larger than Current Estimates (Nature, Associated Press, The Hill, Grist)

• Further study on the social cost of carbon pollution has found that each ton of Carbon Dioxide polluted results in $185 of damage.

• This is more than three times the amount used by the US government, which means we are drastically underestimating the economic impact on carbon pollution.

• The results imply that if pollution policies were created with the updated cost of carbon, the economic benefits of such policies would increase, leading to more climate action possibilities.

To read more headlines from this week, click below.

Carter Dome - White Mountains, NH/ Image Courtesy of Nick Moore

Education Piece - Environmental Policy 2001-2005

Hello all-

We hope you are enjoying the start of spooky season! This week we are firmly in the 21st century as we cover the environmental policies from 2001-2005! These few years were less focused on large-scale environmental policies, and more focused on responding to emergencies- particularly the attacks on September 11th in 2001 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However we do see a continuation of the efforts that picked up in the late 1990s to pass preventative measures focused on emissions that harm vulnerable populations, particularly children. 

2001- EPA responds to September 11 

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center, the EPA worked with city and state officials to assist in environmental monitoring and clean up in the immediate aftermath. The attacks were an environmental disaster, posing a long term threat to the health of local residents and first responders on the scene. According to a 2003 EPA evaluation report, “Airborne dust from the collapse of the towers blanketed Lower Manhattan and was blown or dispersed into many of the surrounding office buildings, schools, and residences. This complex mixture of building debris and combustion by-products contained such ingredients as asbestos, lead, glass fibers, and concrete dust” (EPA’s Response to the World Trade Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement).  In response, the EPAs work at Ground Zero included monitoring air, water and dust for potential environmental hazards, vacuuming debris and dust from streets of Lower Manhattan, disposing hazardous waste from the WTC site, and the creation of an online database to report monitoring results to the public and press (EPA Response to September 11 | Region 2 | US EPA). Their work continued long after the immediate response ended, with the EPA launching multiple projects and programs to address cleanup in the area. These programs included the Residential Dust Cleanup Program, which “allowed residents living south of Canal Street in lower Manhattan to have their homes professionally cleaned and tested or just tested free of charge” (EPA Response to September 11 | Region 2 | US EPA). 

2003- Clean School Bus USA Program 

With over 25 million children taking school busses every day, the Clean School Bus USA 

program was designed to reduce the amount of diesel that children were exposed to on the bus,

thus improving the overall air quality. Not only was this program designed to "help

communities reduce emissions from older diesel school buses”(OAR US EPA) but it was also

focused on providing information on strategies to reduce emissions, which include reducing 

or eliminating idling or updating bus fleets to have more fuel efficient models (OA US EPA). As of 2010, the EPA reported that 45,000 buses were using emission reduction technologies and that more than 3 million students were riding on cleaner school buses (Document Display | NEPIS | US EPA). 

2005- EPA responds to Hurricane Katrina 

In the wake of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall on the Gulf coast on August 29th, 2005, the EPA took on its role as the lead agency to clean up hazardous materials and conducted tests to monitor, restore and then maintain public health in the affected areas. From the immediate aftermath through the first year of clean up, the EPA “Conducted environmental monitoring and sampling of water, air, floodwater and residual sediment; responded to approximately 70 emergency situations to address chemical spills, fires, and other emergencies; provided technical advice and assistance, promoted recycling, and handled the disposal of over 4 million containers of household hazardous waste” (Katrina: One Year Anniversary | Response to 2005 Hurricanes | US EPA). In a 2006 report, the EPA noted that much of their Hurricane Katrina response was “generally improved upon by the lessons learned by the EPAs response to the World Trade Center collapse” but that there was still room for improvement in future disaster response, particularly related to coordination with other agencies and water tanker trucks (Katrina: One Year Anniversary | Response to 2005 Hurricanes | US EPA).

Join us next month for our coverage of 2006-2010!

To read this full piece with works cited, check it out on our blog!

Nick and Ryan's team at the finish of Ragnar's Reach the Beach  / Image Courtesy of  Ryan Scerbo

Missed our last issue? Want to start from the beginning? No worries! Click below to catch up on all our newsletters.