Eco Report – March 15, 2024

Planting trees within cities is a popular plan to mitigate some hot zones. Here’s an example of Kansas City. Trees are being planted across Kansas City at an unprecedented pace, putting the city in the front ranks of American cities aggressively fighting climate change. An ongoing campaign to maintain Kansas City’s existing tree canopy is being broadened. Meanwhile, efforts to enhance native grasses and wildflowers across the metropolitan area are taking on new life and urgency.

Tree preservation will kick into high gear in June when a $12 million windfall grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reaches city coffers. The influx will enable the city to provide greater care to their existing arboreal canopy, which includes many aging trees planted after World War II. That federal infusion is in addition to money the city budgeted this fiscal year and next for its 10,000 Tree Campaign focused on heat islands in the older, poorer sections of the city, and for giving residents trees to plant in their yards.

WFHB is doing a series on ocean fishing, focusing on those species found in grocery stores. At year 1000 AD, all the oceans had billions of fish. Fishing at the time was mostly local, that is within 10 miles from port. A popular fishing method was to use a weir, essentially a v-shaped fence running parallel to the shore. At high tide, the fence was under water, at low tide the fish were trapped, so the fisherman could simply walk out and collect the fish trapped by the weir. Fishing boats were generally small enough that they could be dragged up the shore to high ground. The Vikings were brave enough to explore the high seas, and discovered Iceland and Newfoundland. The first child of European descent born in the Americas was the son of Leif Erickson. He was born at the Norse site at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, occupied about 1021.

By 1600 AD, many European nations were fishing in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. An important fish taken from the Mediterranean was the bluefin tuna. This largest of the tuna species spawned in the Mediterranean in huge numbers. The tradition of tuna trapping began in the Mediterranean with the Phoenicians; it was improved by the Arabs around the year 1000. In the 1870s, Sicilians started packing the bluefin tuna meat in locally produced olive oil instead of preserving with salt. At that time, there were tuna operations found across Sicily. Many canned their tuna; this supported large communities of fishers and their families. Today the bluefin stock is very low in both the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, nearing the status of “endangered”. The tv show “Wicked Tuna” is based on pursuit of the few bluefin left in the western part of the Atlantic.

Fishing in the North Atlantic by many nations occurred after 1500. Fishing pressure eased during the first half of the 20th century because of the two world wars and the Depression. By 1950, operations were again in full swing. In the 1960s the Soviet Union had developed fleets of boats to fish abundant areas around the globe. One operation was off the coast from Gloucester. The Soviets would take over 99 percent of the fish. The fleet could be seen from shore, and our fishermen were not pleased. Finally, in 1976 a bill was passed that made territorial waters 200 nautical miles out part of the nations’ fishing rights. In 1992 Canada closed the Grand Banks (east of Newfoundland) because there were few fish remaining.

The thought was the population of cod and halibut would recover in a few years. It didn’t happen. Now the cold-water species are moving north out of the Gulf of Maine because the water is too warm. There is a prediction that all the oceans will be overfished by 2050. This prediction was made 25 years ago, and events thus far suggest the prognosis is pretty accurate. In the next installment we’ll describe how the fish in the oceans can be saved.

Nine years after her 13-year old daughter, died from a rare brain tumor, Kari Rhinehart finally got the call she had been waiting for. On October 23, Dr. Michael Freedhoff, America’s top chemicals regulator, called her personally to tell her that the EPA had moved to ban trichloroethylene (TCE) – a known carcinogen that had contaminated the groundwater in Franklin, Indiana, where Rhinehart used to live. The contamination came from several sources, but notably, a nearby electrical parts plant had been using TCE as a degreaser. The chemical is also used as a spot cleaner and dry-cleaning solvent. Rhinehart believes that exposure to chemicals including TCE is what caused her daughter’s cancer – as well as the higher-than-average rate of pediatric cancer in Franklin.

Experts have found that TCE not only causes cancer, it is also toxic to the nervous system, kidneys, liver, immune system and to developing fetuses. The Environmental Defense Fund has been working for more than 10 years to get TCE off the market – providing scientific expertise to regulators and working with impacted families to educate policymakers on the dangers of the chemical. Once the EPA’s proposal is final – hopefully this year – most uses of TCE will be banned within a year.

MIT is launching an ambitious climate Center to aid policymakers. Environmentalists welcome the new initiative, but worry about potential funding and influence from fossil companies. The MIT Climate Policy Center will be part of a new and larger campus-wide initiative called the Climate Project at MIT, which aims to mobilize different parts of the university to develop, deliver, and scale up practical climate solutions as quickly as possible, according to Richard K. Lester, MIT’s vice provost. “MIT is never better than when we come together to solve big problems,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a video announcing the launch of the Climate Project.

The video recalled key roles MIT played in developing radar for the U.S. military in World War II, putting the first astronauts on the moon, plugging the hole in Earth’s protective ozone layer and mapping the human genome. Tackling climate change is MIT’s most ambitious project yet, Kornbluth said. Still, some fear the university could turn to fossil fuel companies, as it has in the past, for additional funding, which could compromise the initiative’s objectives. Nathan Shwatal, a co-lead of MIT Divest, a student-led climate advocacy organization calling for the university to end its investments in fossil fuel companies, expressed cautious optimism about the new initiative. There’s great hope for the research, Shwatal said. “But there’s also a dark path that it can go down when it comes to fossil fuel funding.”