Climate Action

Is There a CSA Near You? | One Acre Farm

on February 12, 2022February 12, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | February 12, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit: AdobeStock

Community supported agriculture (CSA) is an up-and-coming innovative solution for consumers looking for the best way to eat wonderfully healthy, locally grown produce at an economical price while dramatically reducing the carbon emissions associated with our food system (which is 15% of our total annual CO2 emissions in the US, or 9 billion tons per year). “If you want to support regenerative agriculture, and all its benefits, buy produce from a local farmer,” recommends Gabe Brown, a North Dakota farmer who is a soil health pioneer and was featured in the acclaimed documentary, Kiss the Ground.

There are more than 7,600 CSAs in the United States. Most, if not all, have caps on the maximum number of members. Once the CSA has reached its max, they create a waiting list. The average retention rate for CSAs is approximately 45%, with a few retaining as many as 70–80%. But that’s a very small few. These strong partnerships, between farmers (producers) and consumers, were established so that both can share in the benefits and the risks of the farm’s harvest. CSA’s are located primarily in the Northeast, Mid Atlantic, and the Pacific Northwest. Consumers pay a flat fee upfront to become a member, and then receive a weekly share during harvest. This is referred to as cropsharing.

Producers develop a strong connection with their members by providing regular farm updates, usually through email, which might include recipes and a newsletter. Many CSAs have a social media presence as well, and also host farm events and offer farm tours. This positive and educational interaction results is a very well-informed consumer which strengthens the consumers’ ties to the farm and local community which is one of the goals of CSA producers.

What are the food miles of the produce in your local grocery store?

When shopping at any of the big super market chains, including Whole Foods, you’ll spot the little colorful signs alerting shoppers to which state or country a specific fruit or vegetable is from. The large grocery chains in my location mostly sell produce from “California,” which is quite far for simple vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers. Too often, we’ll also see Mexico, Peru, Ecuador. Whole Foods has a special “local” section with a small selection of produce and eggs from Virginia or Maryland.

Eliminating the unnecessary amount of carbon emissions associated with food transportation is imperative. According to The Conscious Challenge, food transportation amounts to approximately 4% of the our food system carbon emissions. To stay below 1.5ºC, which must be our goal to prevent catastrophic warming, we’re required to cut 3 billion tons of CO2 from our consumption choices as outlined in An Action Plan for Solving the Climate Crisis Now.

By definition, “locally grown” means within 400 miles per The Food Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. But farmer’s markets, retailers and food organizations, often draft their own definition of locally grown, which may end up being vegetables from as far away as 1000 miles. Additionally, recent studies have shown that the vital nutrient density of fruits and vegetables goes down as the distance traveled goes up.

One Acre Farm

One Acre Farm is an amazing CSA, powered by the sun, located in the DC metro area on the Maryland side. It services all three communities: Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington DC; and Northern Virginians who may work in DC or can easily travel by metro to the One Acre Farm DC pick-up locations. This 34-acre farm (wow, quite a stunning growth spurt, from 1 acre to 34 acres in 15 years), is located in Dickerson, Maryland just a few miles from the Potomac River. It was founded in 2007 and is owned by Mike Protas and his wife Kristin. Farmer Mike, as he is called, has always been a CSA producer and pursued this particular path in the world of agriculture because he feels “it’s very important to have a connection with your community to grow your food with.”

Charlotte Henderson is the One Acre Farm Manager. I was delighted to have an informative conversation with both Mike and Charlotte and hear their passion and excitement for the CSA experience as they were pricing the 2022 annual member fee and calculating how many open spots they have based on heir 2021 retention rate. One Acre Farm has a max of 200 members.

“If we want farms to exist, we have to change our mentality as consumers.”
Mike Protas, Founder and Owner of One Acre Farm

Mike explained how misconceptions about CSAs are really the only thing holding back growth. Traditional small, local farmers who follow conventional ag practices, (that of using pesticides so that their produce looks beautiful at the farmers market), rarely survive. “They may have a few good years, but eventually the pesticides will degrade their soil, and they can’t make it in the long run,” Mike said.

Mike and Charlotte are enthusiastic about their Certified Naturally Grown practices that are very similar to organically grown and regenerative farm soil health practices:

They do not use pesticides.
They do use cover crops to boost soil health and increase water infiltration rate which helps keep the soil moist in high heat.
Compost is applied to the soil which also boosts soil health and crop nutrient density. (One Acre Farm gets their compost from Compost Crew that rents land from One Acre Farm for their composting.)
Mike even adds biochar to the potato field “because potatoes love biochar,” (so does the soil).

It’s very important to Mike that he pay those who work for One Acre Farm a living wage. Mike went on to explain that the upfront commitment is the most important part. Once the 200 members’ are confirmed, One Acre Farm’s annual harvest is paid for, (Mike will happily set up a payment plan if that works best for family budgets; and Individuals who want to become members, can join with a friend and the two can either split each week’s bag or alternate weeks). With the planting and harvesting costs covered from the start, Mike has already sold all the produce that he’ll now spend the year growing. Both the producer and the consumer share in the harvest’s risk.

Once the summer harvest begins, the team walks the fields each week to see which vegetables are “ready.” Mike and Charlotte explained that the farm sends an email to all members at the beginning of the week, letting them know what it “looks like a possibility of” the veggies that might be in their weekly “share.” The morning of their pick-up day, the farm sends out an email stating, “This is what is actually in your share” this week, along with a few recipes.

In my humble opinion, this is the very best part. Vegetables picked fresh from a local farm and placed into a bag with your name written on it, delivered to the local pick-up spot, every single week during the 22-week stretch. Very fresh, which means very delicious. Maximumly healthy. Nominal handling. Very low carbon emissions. And no single-use plastic produce bags. The next best thing might be growing vegetables and fruits on your own property, but many people don’t have the time or patience. So, for the majority, this is as good as it gets.

Charlotte sounded thrilled that their pre-packaged “share bags” worked out so well. This method was a Covid modification. Originally, families picked their selections from bins. But now, the One Acre Farm team fills the bags each week for their members. Charlotte also stressed the value CSA members receive, explaining how there are some weeks in the summer when there is so much produce, families would have ended up paying a fortune at a local store for the same quantity of fresh-picked, certified naturally grown fruits and vegetables.

One Acre Farm Pick-Up Locations:

7 Locks Brewery, Rockville, MD
True Respite Brewery, Rockville, MD
Wootton Oaks, Rockville, MD
Saints Row Brewery, Gaithersburg, MD
One Acre Farm, Dickerson, MD
Anytime Fitness, Poolesville, MD
Capitol Hill, Washington DC
The Palisades Hub, Washington DC

One Acre Farm also has a corporate client. Each week several of the team members bring a couple hundred mini share bags to the corporate office and pass them out to the employees. Additionally, Manna Food Center is a recipient of One Acre Farm’s weekly share.

I asked Mike and Charlotte if climate change had impacted One Acre Farm, the way it’s impacted farmers in many farming communities out West and in the Northern Plains. Mike sounded really grounded in his perspective. “What we need to do as farmers and humans is help mitigate some of these climate challenges.” He continued with a determined outlook, “What we have done on our farm to help deal with the fluctuations of climate and temperatures and extreme moisture and extreme drought and extreme cold is work on the soil.”

Soil health! Smart. Very, very smart, actually. Soil health just may be the most effective climate mitigation of them all.

One Acre Farm only has a few member spots remaining. Click here to check out One Acre Farm’s Open for Enrollmentpage.

“This is not about saving our planet, it’s about saving ourselves…The truth is, with or without us, the natural world will rebuild.”
—Sir David Attenborough, *A Life On Our Planet*
“WE MUST REWILD THE WORLD!”

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Rethinking Cemeteries as We Rush to Restore Our Habitat

on February 12, 2022February 12, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | February 12, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit: AdobeStock

Skirmishes along one newly emerging climate battlefront are quickly escalating worldwide. Therefore, now is an ideal time to learn more about this new controversy that’s causing community conflicts, so we can map out a strategy, and stave off the often bitter friction that has plagued climate related transitions to new ways of doing things. Case in point, the fossil fuel climate war.

Biodiversity restoration and land conservation requires protecting millions of acres of land. The nature-based solutions (NBS) movement refers to this mission as 30 x 30. We must protect and restore 30% of our terrestrial land, and 30% of our oceans. At COP26 in November 2021, the COP26 Campaign for Nature noted the exceptional benefits of such a noble mission that included climate change mitigation, resilience and adaptation.

“Conserving 30% of land in strategic locations could safeguard 500 gigatonnes (GtC) of carbon stored in vegetation and soils, and reduce the extinction risk of nearly 9 out of 10 threatened terrestrial species.”
UN Study

Safeguarding 500 GtC of carbon safely stored in our land and ocean soils, and terrestrial plant and ocean species, is paramount in saving humanity as we rush to fight the three life-threatening crises that are now interwoven to become one enormous supercrisis:

Excessive carbon stuffed into our atmosphere.
Biodiversity loss.
Plastic pollution and waste management .

Global Death Rate

On average, worldwide, there are 56 million deaths per year, according to the world death clock. We’ve lost an additional 5.73 million worldwide and counting since the beginning of Covid. Cemeteries are full to capacity. In the UK, West Kirby locals were furious when 33 mature trees were felled to expand Grange Cemetery. This unnecessary tree-cutting generated outrage amongst environmentalists determined to protect terrestrial land that continues to be pillaged regardless of the long term effect on our survival.

The environmental impact of a traditional burial in a casket six feet under is not covered by the media very often. But the details are quite significant and should be analyzed as we rethink burial options through the lens of climate change and its multiple filters: land protection, biodiversity restoration, planting a trillion trees, and cutting carbon 50% by 2030.

Per the National Cremation Database:

Embalming fluids (methanol, ethanol, formaldehyde, and other organic solvents) are toxic.
The World Health Organization named formaldehyde as a class 1 carcinogen that causes leukemia and brain cancer.
We bury 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid each year in the US.
Embalming fluid can leak from caskets and run into nearby streams. It’s also found in the wastewater of funeral homes.
With 30 x 30 being the highest priority for land use, and many businesses buying land for carbon offset, there is little if any land available for traditional graveyards.
30 million board feet is needed each year to manufacture caskets.
The amount of steel required for caskets and burial vaults each year is the same as what was required to build the Golden Gate Bridge.
An individual cremation emits approximately double the CO2 as a traditional burial, but fortunately has none of the environmental hazards as a ground burial.

Emerging Possibility

Burial tree pods (aka organic burial pods, eco-pods, green burials) have become a hot topic on social media amongst climate activists and environmentalists who are trying to imagine a new low carbon paradigm for an age-old tradition.

“Life never stops,” is the mantra used to inspire families to consider the benefits of organic burial pods.

Capsula Mundi (Italian for earth pod) in Rome, created the biodegradable egg-shaped sarcophagus in which a corpse is placed in fetal position, lowered into the ground, and a young tree is planted on top. The tree serves as the tomb stone. Both the egg-pod and the body will slowly decompose into compost that will nourish the tree. “We are earth, and to earth we shall return,” say the Catholics about these innovative eco-pods. The Catholic Church permits green burials as long as the ceremony is consistent with Catholic burial beliefs (no infusing the burial experience with words or concepts aligned with “erroneous ideas about death”).

According to EarthBeat, Capsula Mundi designers, Raoul Bretzel and Anna Citelli, envision “sacred forests” becoming he new norm.

The one challenge we have to ponder about this beautiful, heartwarming, carbon negative concept, and its many environmental benefits, is the potential destruction of trees and forests during climate change extreme weather events. Wildfires, hurricanes and tornadoes have the ability to unearth a newly planted eco-pod, which would be devastating. But then again, scientists have been warning that no one and nothing are safe in our new world at 1.2ºC and climbing. We just have to know in advance that weather extremes might uproot an organic burial pod and plan ahead.

Carbon Capture and Removal Start-up Verdox Launches with $80 Million Commitment

on February 3, 2022February 13, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | February 3, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit: AdobeStock

Start-up Verdox has officially launched after being awarded an $80 million commitment for direct carbon capture and removal from three investment firms: Prelude Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital and Bill Gate’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The revolutionary electrochemical technology was pioneered by MIT’s Professor T. Alan Hatton and Dr. Sahag Voskian.

Electric Carbon removal for a net-zero future. Let us power your climate transformation. Contact us.
Verdox Home Page

Back on April 8, 2020, Verdox was awarded $499,900 under the Special Project Program of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The project was entitled “Electro-swing [Absortion] for High Efficiency Direct Air Capture” to develop a scalable, proof of concept (POC) for direct air capture (DAC) prototype with a deliverable date of April 7, 2022. The POC was for technology that would employ electrochemical cells to capture and release carbon that would generate electro-swing absorption. This breakthrough technology prevents the need for the standard heat and water carbon capture method, creating a new model for the carbon capture industry.

ESG Today noted:

“The high energy efficiency and scalability of Verdox’s technology could enable the company to play a major role in addressing the carbon removal challenge. This innovation has provided a paradigm change for both industrial and air capture – and the Verdox team has made great strides to reduce the concept to economical commercial practice.”
Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures

Removing CO2 from the air before it’s released through novel electro-swing absorption technology, would be worth every penny it may cost. Picture a mammoth battery sucking up a torrent of gaseous waste as the electric battery is charging up, and then releasing it safely when the battery is discharged so it can be stored underground as rock, or utilized to manufacture products. This advanced technology will require 70% less energy than existing technology-based carbon capture methods. At this time, Verdox’s test bed is only functional in the lab. The $80 million will be used to further develop the proof of concept.

In John Doerr’s book Speed & Scale, An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, the OKR (objective and key result) of 10 billion tons carbon (GtC) that must be removed from the atmosphere each year, in addition to curbing existing carbon emissions. “As things stand, our net zero objective — 10 GtC of annual carbon removal — is a truly audacious goal.” Doerr goes on to explain that both engineered solutions, (Verdox’s innovative electro-swing absorption DAC falls in this category), and natural carbon drawdown solutions, (reforestation, aforestation, rewilding, biodiversity restoration, increased soil health, etc) are required. “What makes this challenge really difficult, almost implausibly so, is the colossal scale of the job.”

On the nature-based side of the coin, trailblazer Thomas Crowther (Assistant Professor of Global Ecosystem Ecology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland and World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader) recently gave a Countdown TED Talk about restoring biodiversity on the .9 billion hectares of ideal land that’s been identified and mapped out. And that doing so would drawdown 30% of the existing legacy load carbon stuck in the atmosphere that’s causing global warming. Crowther announced that he founded Restor, a new open data platform network equipped with a machine learning model powered by Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud, for the purpose of helping “anyone be part of ecological restoration,” even homeowners who convert their high-maintenance, pesticide-covered monoculture turf lawns, to dense biodiverse no mow lawns.

Don’t Look Up launched on Netflix December 24, 2021. The satirical parody, written, produced and directed by Adam McKay, set the record for the most views in one week, and quickly became the #2 most watched Original Netflix film of all times, with 321.52 million hours streamed in the first 28 days. Peter Isherwell, portrayed by Mark Rylance, is the villain in this classic film about Earth’s destruction at the hands of a profit-seeking tech giant. The scientists’ (LeonardoDicaprio, Rob Morgan and Jennifer Lawrence) alarmed and urgent warnings, and the public’s blind faith in technology, left viewers woke to the perils of betting our lives on technology as our savior. On February 8, 2022, Oscar nominations will be announced and the tech carbon capture industry will have a better idea about what they’re up against in trying to convince the world that they can solve the climate crisis on their own.

We definitely need tech carbon capture and removal solutions for pulling out CO2 before it’s released, as well as direct air capture for fossil fuel companies to drawdown decades of excessive carbon emissions. But the main point in John Doerr’s Speed & Scale, is that we need ALL the many solutions that he earmarked in his climate action plan. And even with all hands on deck, and the diverse solutions up and running, along with the four accelerators, it’s still an audacious goal.

Alarming Findings | Are We Inhaling Nanoplastics & What About Our Food?

on February 3, 2022February 6, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 31, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit: AdobeStock

Nanoplastic is a recently discovered novel hazard that potentially undermines human health the same way it negatively impacts animal and wildlife health, resulting in infertility, inflammation and cancer. The possible nanoplastic toxicological threat for humans is quickly being propelled to the forefront of our minds, following targeted research on the alarming plastic crisis that has reached the farthest corners of the earth.

Nanoplastics are so tiny they’re invisible to the human eye, and can travel in the air more than a thousand miles. They are easily inhaled, especially in cities, which is of major concern to scientists. In the Greenland ice core, scientists were shocked to find nanoplastics that dated as far back as 1965; 25% of these nanoplastics were from automobile tires, which further underscores the harm to those living in cities.

In the Swiss Alps, scientists found nanoplastics that they determined traveled through the air from cities approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles) away. Of the more than 43 trillion nanoplastic particles that scientists calculated land in Switzerland each year, some came from as far away as the Atlantic Ocean 2000 km (1,240 miles) away.

The difference between nanoplastics and microplastics is significant and the two words should not be interchanged.

Microplastics – small plastic bits less than 5 mm (0.2 inches in diameter)
Nanoplastics – infinitesimal specs of plastic with diameters less than 0.001 mm

Recent findings by the American Chemical Society (ACS) identified plastic packaging as the main source of the microplastics found in our food, bottled water, soda, and salt. “However, a thorough discussion of this topic is not possible when the notions of both microplastics and nanoplastics are combined. To date, there are no methods available to analyze nanoplastics in food, and only the presence of microplastics has been demonstrated through the methods available,” asserted the authors of the report, Alexandra tee Halle and Jean Francois Ghiglione.

“[Our] viewpoint highlights the complex environmental behavior and fate of nanoplastics that are distinct from microplastic particles. We advocate that the environmental fate and behavior of different plastic particle sizes are so unique, they should not be described together but researched and described independently.”
American Chemical Society

Researchers have determined that we eat approximately 100 bits of microplastic with every meal, which amounts to 1 credit card per week and 52 credit cards a year. Considering the reality that plastic contains toxic chemicals, it’s natural to instinctively choose to avoid food packaged in plastic in the likelihood microplastics and nanoplastics are proven conclusively to be toxic.

From the UNEP Published Scientific Assessment of Plastic Pollution:

“As plastics break down they transfer microplastics, synthetic and cellulosic microfibres, toxic chemicals, metals and micropollutants into waters, sediments, and eventually marine food chains. For humans, this can lead to hormonal changes, developmental disorders, reproductive abnormalities and cancer. Whenever marine species are people’s main source of food, serious threats are posted by human uptake of microplastics via seafood. Plastics are also ingested through drinks and even common salt; they penetrate the skin and are inhaled when suspended in the air. Mental health may be affected by the knowledge that sea turtles, whales, dolphins and many seabirds – which have cultural importance for various communities – are at risk.”

At the ACS Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting & Expo during Covid, there were several graduate student presenters from the lab of Rolf Halden, PhD, at Arizona State University. Their names are Charles Rolsky and Varun Kelkar.

“You can find plastics contaminating the environment at virtually every location on the globe, and in a few short decades, we’ve gone from seeing plastic as a wonderful benefit to considering it a threat…There’s evidence that plastic is making its way into our bodies, but very few studies have looked for it there.”
Charles Rolsky, August 17, 2020

Research into whether or not nanoplastics undermines the health and well-being of animal and wildlife found that nanoplastic exposure resulted in cancer, inflammation and infertility in the species tested. At the time of the presentation to the American Chemical Society, Rolsky and Kelkar had discovered that nonoplastics do travel through our human GI tracks. They then speculated about whether nanoplastics accumulated in our organs.

To study this, Rolsky and Kelkar collaborated with Diego Mastroeni, PhD. They examined 47 samples from the four organs most likely to be exposed to infinitesimal plastic particles— lungs, kidney, spleen and liver — and created a testing procedure with Raman spectrometry, as well as an online computer program using a standardized format so that researchers everywhere could report their results. Dr. Halden remarked that “this shared resource will help build a plastic exposure database so that we can compare exposures in organs and groups of people over time and geographic space.”

These new findings about nanoplastic toxins in the air are of particular importance with global warming now at 1.2ºC. Rain bombs, flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes are consistently spreading the dangerous chemicals found in lawn fertilizers, hazardous waste sites, chemical plants, and superfund sites. In the heat, these chemicals vaporize and we inhale them regularly. And now we learn that we have invisible nanoplastics to worry about, too.

Let’s take these new warnings very seriously. I plan to wear my face mask outdoors all the time from now on, especially in cities.

Plastic Bank & Ocean Bound Social Plastic, Really?

on January 29, 2022January 30, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 29, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit AdobeStock

The plastic crisis engulfing the globe and posing a major health threat to billions of innocent, impoverished people living in coastal communities in third world countries, has created an enterprising opportunity for the industrious thanks to Plastic Bank. Founded in 2013 by Shaun Frankson and David Katz, Plastic Bank is a nonprofit with a mission to turn plastic “waste into worth”… and empower “vulnerable communities with a path out of poverty.”

According to a 2019 report (put together by Tearfund, Fauna & Flora International, WasteAide, and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in England), plastic pollution kills up to one million people a year worldwide. This alarming report highlights the shocking harm to both humans and marine life. Not only the staggering one million deaths per year, but more than 180 different species of birds, fish, invertebrates and mammals (and mass numbers of each of these species) were found to be impaired by swallowing plastic. There was even a fish species discovered in the deepest ocean trench that had ingested plastic. Further, the report noted that the fishing and tourism industries in many vulnerable locales, which are the main livelihoods in these coastal developing communities, have been destroyed by ocean-based consumer plastic pollution. The economic loss totals $13 billion USD each year.

Annually, according to Plastic Oceans:

380 million tons of plastic are produced every year.
Some reports indicate that 50% of the 380 million tons is single-use plastic.
10 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean.

“The world needs to be using much less plastic, and the plastic we do produce should be valued, reused and recycled as much as possible. It’s incumbent on the producers of plastic products and packaging that bear the most responsibility for plastic pollution to do the most to stop its negative impacts on the environment.”
Fauna & Flora International, Plastic pollution crisis — New report highlights health impact on world’s poorest

Plastic Bank’s vision to help solve the plastic crisis aligns in part with Fauna & Flora International’s poignant assertion that manufacturers of “plastic products and packaging that bear the most responsibility for plastic pollution must do the most to stop its negative impacts on the environment.” Plastic Bank seems to have applied the classic principles of: turn every negative into a positive…make lemonade from trillions of plastic lemons…and what doesn’t kill you can make you “bonuses” from Plastic Bank.

“Eliminate ocean plastic by bringing a billion people together to monetize waste while enhancing lives.”
Plastic Bank Mission

In spelling out its seemingly humanitarian mission so cleverly, and being praised for its benevolence, Plastic Bank has succeeded at gaslighting the public into buying into this warped view of the upside of the horrific quantities of plastic choking the life out of our oceans. The founders have won many awards for the positive impact their vision has had on the coastal communities where Plastic Bank operates.

Despite the acclaim and good vibes for pretending to save our oceans by creating wealth for the poor, many leaders appear to be oblivious to the partnerships Plastic Bank has roped into their plastic ecosystem. Partners such as SC Johnson are now promoting “100% Ocean Bound Social Plastic” as a wonderful thing, a marketing advantage they can use to sell Windex with Vinegar in plastic bottles, instead of the consumer choosing to buy a competing green brand sold in an aluminum can or to make their own glass cleaner using vinegar and orange peels and storing it in a glass jar.

The subliminal message being conveyed by SC Johnson is that if consumers don’t buy Windex with Vinegar in plastic bottles, we’ll be robbing the impoverished in coastal Haiti or Brazil of their livelihood, despite the fact that plastic bottles and packaging sold in the US has a 75% chance of becoming landfill waste (and won’t become part of Plastic Bank’s plastic ecosystem). Only 25% of the plastic manufactured in the US actually gets recycled. Additionally, this type of giant sized spin, deflects the consumer’s attention away from connecting the dots that these communities wouldn’t need to collect plastic to earn money if their fishing and tourism industries hadn’t been wiped out by plastic pollution.

What is Social Plastic? Social Plastic is ethically recovered material from the Plastic Bank ecosystem that transfers its value to communities in need.
Plastic Bank

What Plastic Bank calls “Social Plastic” is used to create:

PET (water bottles) keep out of sun toxins from leaking
LDPE
HDPE
Plastic yarn

Plastic Bank operates in: Brazil, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, and Phillippines where collectors who exchange plastic waste for bonuses can use them to secure basic needs: groceries, clean drinking water, school tuition, internet connection, health insurance, and cooking fuels.

Plastic Bank’s global partners: SC Johnson (Windex with Vinegar), Aldi (discount super market chains), SEINZ (consumer brands: body care, beauty brands, hair care, hand care, healthy living, skin care, nails, vitamins), Geiner, Henkel (chemical & consumer brands), Carton Pack (Italy, an international market leader that produces packaging for vegetable and fruit industry), IBM, and Shell Energy. Yes, that is Shell oil company. Most plastic is partially made from oil.

SC Johnson earns $11 billion in revenue and sells home cleaning, storage, air care, and personal care products in every country in the world. They were founded in 1886 and have manufactured trillions of single-use plastic containers since the creation of plastic. Although “1 Billion Bottles” saved from the ocean is exciting, it’s really only a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done to correct all the plastic pollution SC Johnson has drowned the world with.

Plastic Bank has no intention of reducing the use of plastic by encouraging partners and consumers to switch to aluminum, glass and / or reusables. Plastic Bank’s marketing doesn’t educate the public about the negative impacts of plastic pollution on human health and our environment, and instead aggressively attempts to convince the public that the most important goal should be monetizing plastic waste, so that those in third world countries can earn a living from the plastic waste, which makes plastic waste a good thing after all.

Plastic contains multiple toxins that are dangerous and very harmful to babies and children. Plastic also negatively impacts adult health:

Childhood development issues (lowers IQ in children)
Disrupts hormonal growth
Carcinogen
Asthma
Pulmonary cancer
Nerve and brain damage
Kidney diseases

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is two times the size of Texas, and billions of tons of additional plastic waste in our waterways and oceans will not be eliminated by consumer brands using the plastic they make from manufacturing new plastic bottles from old ones gathered up by Plastic Bank collectors. The plastic crisis can only be solved by reducing the amount of products that are packaged in every kind of plastic, including recycled plastic.

How many SC Johnson plastic bottles and containers are in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

Plastic Bank’s ecosystem is NOT closed loop. There are many products that can be manufactured from Plastic Bank’s stash of collected plastic. Products that permanently remove plastic from our environment. Why doesn’t Plastic Bank partner with companies who manufacture the products below?

Bricks
Countertops
Carpeting
Film and Sheeting
Handbags
Traffic cones

Plastic bottles can only be recycled or reused to create new bottles 2 or 3 times. With each subsequent use, it becomes much weaker and is more likely to leach toxins when being used. Further, it’s impossible to actually know how many times a bottle has been recycled, so this isn’t a solution that can be managed effectively.

Plastic that ends up in our waterways and oceans breaks down over time and becomes tiny little shreds of plastic called microplastics. Microplastics are poison and are now everywhere, including our food supply. Studies have found that we eat 100 bits of microplastic with every single meal. This amounts to one plastic credit card per week, and 52 credit cards per year. This tragedy negatively affects our own health. News broke this week, that there is a new, more dangerous plastic threat, nanoplastic, that’s even more toxic than microplastic.

“The study is uncharted scientific territory, as the spread of nanoplastics through the air remains largely unknown. The result of Brunner’s research is the most accurate record of air pollution from nanoplastics ever made. To count plastic particles, Brunner and his colleagues developed a chemical method that determines sample contamination with a mass spectrometer.” —Charles Dunkin, *Nanoplastic Pollution*, Blaze Trends

If Plastic Bank is able to rethink its current strategy and shift to partnering with companies who manufacture plastic products that are not single-use and will not become future waste, then it will deserve all the awards it’s receiving. But until then, their operation is nothing more than gaslighting American consumers into believing we can keep on buying more plastic packaged products without there being any harmful consequences, no matter how much proof there is to the contrary.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is gallant-secrettortoisenew-800.png — No rose without thorns. —French Proverb.
Groundbreaking YA book series for all ages. Gripping modern day nail-biter with Machiavellian villains, but also a tale that opens our eyes to the brutal war going on beneath our feet that controls our destiny, despite our obliviousness to this potentially civilization-destroying threat.

Kelp Farming | The Big Blue Climate Solution

on January 29, 2022February 7, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 29, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit AdobeStock

Kelp is a type of brown sea alga commonly referred to as seaweed. There are 30 different kelp species. Kelp is known to be the hardiest, most resilient species on Earth. It grows quickly, two to three feet a day, making it one the fastest growing species in the world. It will shoot up to 15 feet in one season (magnolia trees takes 10 years to reach the height of 15 feet). Kelp farming does’t harm the environment. It requires no freshwater, arable land, fertilizer or pesticides.

Kelp is a staple in several Asian countries, Korea and Japan particularly. It is packed full of nutrients and antioxidants: iodine, carotenoids, flavonoids, calcium, iron, magnesium, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K1.

Rich in Iodine, for example, kelp helps our human thyroid function properly in regulating our hormones, including our daily energy level, as well as keeping our brains sharp. These beneficial vitamins and antioxidants also benefit marine species. Thousands of marine species that feed on kelp hide in the kelp forests to protect themselves from predators.

Our planet’s terrestrial forests, its dense biodiversity and its large expanses of healthy soil, are massive carbon sinks that billions of people around the world are working hard to conserve and restore. Rewild the world! Tragically, though, in just a few hours, extreme weather events such as wildfires, hurricanes and tornadoes can obliterate years of conservation efforts, releasing many millions of tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere, further exasperating the climate crisis, and propelling us towards the tipping point. In light of this major climate challenge, scientists have been researching how to scale up kelp forests in our enormous oceans, which make up 70% of the earth’s surface.

Safe carbon storage underwater:

Kelp is a cold water species that thrives in temperatures below 68ºF. According to the findings outlined by National Geographic, Scientists have determined that there are 18.5 million square ocean miles that are conducive to kelp farming that would in turn increase carbon sequestration significantly, if only kelp forests could be scaled up properly. Thankfully, as mentioned, kelp forest grow quickly and are full grown in a single season rather than 30 years like trees. And unbelievably, a kelp forest can absorb much more carbon than a terrestrial forest, 20 times more carbon, in fact. Thus, scientists and innovators are rushing to discover a way to make this work on a mass scale.

This major carbon sequestration strategy is very similar to large terrestrial projects. Thomas Crowther, founder of Restor, recently advocated for a remarkable biodiversity plan in his Countdown TED Talk. Crowther’s goal is to follow global biodiversity projects around the world, so that we can all learn from each other. Restor’s open data platform network tracks tree and biodiversity projects across the globe on the .9 billion hectares that have been deemed most suitable for habitat restoration. Perhaps kelp cultivation projects should be tracked the same way.

Kelp helps purify the ocean water, the same way trees absorb pollution in the air. Kelp also dramatically decreases ocean acidification which occurs when the ocean water absorbs carbon dioxide. Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, 170 years ago, our oceans have absorbed 25% of the 555 billion tons of carbon (GtC) that have been emitted into the atmosphere. That’s 138.75 GtC, which has warmed the ocean temperature so significantly that 22 % of our ice glaciers have melted. The elevated ocean temperature is also the force behind some of our extreme weather events: more ferocious hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards and rain storms. The warmer ocean temperatures result in increased evaporation, which in turn case there to be much greater participation when it storms.

Kelp farming:

Kelp has three main parts very similar to a terrestrial plant’s structure:

the holdfast that grips and anchors and allows kelp to move with the water (similar to root)
the stipe (stem-like)
the blade (similar to leaf)

Several different types of kelp are grown together to create a forest. Washington University created a brochure that promotes the “Power Of Kelp.” The pamphlet outlined the ease and simplicity of cultivating a kelp forest:

Create a grid-shaped network of buoys and grow lines.
Seed kelp spores onto the grow lines between the buoys.
Place the structure into the water.
Nothing else needed…

Kelp farming is much easier and less expensive than terrestrial farming. The only constants that need monitoring are water temperature and storms.

Small scale kelp farming has successfully thrived for decades, supplying product for many of our everyday food staples, vitamin supplements, medications, soap, toothpaste, shampoo, etc.

The long term goal of many scientists focused on scaling-up carbon storage to keep the global temperature below 1.5ºC, is to clump together and sink the harvested kemp into the deep sea where it can be safely stashed away for many thousands of years. The trick is in finding a way to sink the kelp into the deep sea. No one has figured that out yet. Stay tuned!

Rising ocean temperatures have made growing kelp forests in some ocean areas no longer a viable option. The water along North and South Carolina’s coastline, on average hits a high of 80ºF in the summer, way beyond kelp’s limit of 68ºF. New Jersey’s shoreline water temperature is 74ºC in August. We have to go all the way to Cape Cod to see a temperature just below the kelp max, in this case 66ºF.

As one door closes, another opens.

The Hudson Bay and the Arctic ocean temperatures have also warmed, and now have thriving kelp forests with very little intervention. These two locales seem like they could possibly be ideal locations to grow massive kelp forests and then sink them to the floor. The Hudson Bay is shallow, with a maximum depth of only 886 feet. The Arctic ocean is much deeper, with a max depth of 17,881 feet.

The wetlands on the southwest side of Hudson Bay have an astonishing amount of carbon stored in the soil. The sector is called a peatland, rich in carbon after thousands of years of decaying plants have been layered on top of each other, untouched by humans for the most part.

Hopefully this pristine far north will stay peaceful and quiet, and remain an ideal cool spot for kelp farming.

Informed Action Will Help Restore Biodiversity | Thomas Crowther & Restor

on January 21, 2022January 21, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 21, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; Image Credit Noreen Wise

The World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader Thomas Crowther gave an impassioned Countdown TED Talkrecently in which he emphasized the risks of restoration done wrong. “Simplicity was the strength” of the global Trillion Trees initiative that was launched in January 2020 at the 50th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, “but it came at the expense of nuance that is so important,” Crowther bemoaned to his TED audience.

“Countdown is a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, turning ideas into action.”
Countdown Website Home Page

During his Countdown TED Talk, Crowther humbly rephrased the noble mission of planting a trillion trees in the .9 billion hectares of ideal land where the trees will likely thrive as that of “restoring nature’s biodiversity.” It’s estimated, that if we succeed at this, we would drawdown 30% of the excess carbon that’s currently stuck in our atmosphere with no place to go which is causing global warming and climate change. But Crowther insists that this shaving off of 30% of our legacy carbon is NOT the solution for curbing annual carbon emissions. In short, the planting of these Trillion Trees is NOT a carbon offset for big corporations.

Additionally, Crowther spoke of his regret that anyone would plant monoculture forests that were void of biodiversity and emphasized the difference between the two concepts through two opposing audio tracks: one that highlighted the sound of biodiversity (bird chirps, frog gribits, crickets and insects) versus the lifeless sound of silence of monoculture forests.

Crowther’s humility — at one point, he referred to his mistakes as “naive” and “stupid” — immediately erased two years of frustration for me, someone who has had to fight very, very hard to include biodiversity in the local “tree planting” projects in my county, Fairfax County, Virginia. Most local and state grants are only for tree planting, no biodiversity allowed (deer might come). In one cornerstone county tree planting project, with a large number of volunteers and a collection of decision makers, my being what seemed like the lone voice emphasizing the benefits and importance of biodiversity (planting native diverse shrubs, perennials and ground cover in natural layers beneath each tree, and mapping out small pocket forests that group a handful of diverse native tree species and all the biodiverse layers beneath them) landed me in a corner where I felt side-lined and shunned.

There are many other biodiversity project managers like myself who have experienced similar isolation these past two years because of the odd way that many leaders interpreted the Trillion Trees initiative. “Trillion Trees” became an impossible barrier to navigate around. Meanwhile, passionate nature book lovers like myself rely on resources like Douglas W. Tallamy’s Nature’s Best Hope (2020) and Bringing Nature Home (2007), Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil, David R. Montgomery’s Dirt, that reinforce the vital and life-saving importance of biodiversity. And how about the documentaries: Kiss the Ground, A Life on Our Planet, and Breaking Boundaries. With these books and documentaries reinforcing the importance of biodiversity, seemingly at odds with the “just trees” movement, it became a pitched battle.

Passionate people devoted to nature, surround themselves with, and are captivated by, all types of varying species found in nature. A hike on a forest trail (the Appalachian Trail as often as possible for me) is an adventure of endless discoveries. Traveling to experience the many different types of ecosystems and to learn more about biodiversity and wildlife, as well as devour as many books, documentaries, and movies we can find is what most of us do with our free time. Thus, Trillion Trees was an anomaly from the start that left many of us scratching our heads.

Through this very powerful, necessary and brilliant Countdown TED Talk, Crowther bridged the gaps, mended the fences, and united all of us who are focused on rewilding and nature-based solutions in our climate emergency. He announced the creation of his new nonprofit Restor founded by Crowther Lab, which is a new open data platform network equipped with a machine learning model that is powered by Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud for the purpose of helping “anyone be part of ecological restoration.”

“Biodiversity underpins all life on earth.”
Thomas Crowther

Crowther explained the important benefits of such an innovative global platform:

We can all learn from each other by sharing our successes and failures.
Protection of the land so that trees can recover.
Amendment of soil so vegetation can return.
Promotion of the health of grasslands and all types of ecosystems.

Global restoration is a very steep mountain that we have to climb, especially when it’s complicated with extreme weather events which can destroy a landscape within a few hours. The volcanic island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai that exploded on January 15 was completely obliterated. All the rich tropical biodiversity has been lost forever. Extreme tornadoes and hurricanes level biodiversity in a blink. Years of biodiversity restoration can be erased in a few minutes.

Crowther appealed to viewers to join the action. “We need the whole ecology of humanity” to restore our global ecosystems and all its biodiversity.

How Does Compost Collection Work? | Compost Crew

on January 14, 2022February 17, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 14, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; image credit, Compost Crew

Composting home kitchen scraps is essential. It’s one of the most critical climate actions we can take as we rush to keep global warming below 1.5ºC and avoid the much feared tipping point (that threatens to trigger runaway warming). In fact, composting is so vital to our survival as a human species, that if you’re not already composting, it’s imperative that you begin today.

In John Doerr’s new book Speed & Scale, An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, he explains that food waste is roughly 33% of all the food that’s produced, and is responsible for 2 billion tons (GtC) of CO2e each year, most of which is in the form of methane emitted from landfills. “Every pound of wasted food is a pound of wasted water and energy,” he asserts. In order to reach net-zero, Doerr outlined that we must decrease food waste from the current 33% of food produced to 10%.

In order to achieve this goal, composting should be mandatory in every state. But there’s more. Compost significantly increases soli health in the following ways:

boosts carbon drawdown substantially
increases soil water infiltration rate
keeps soil moist during high heat especially when dense biodiverse plants are grown on the surface to keep the soil protected
adds vital nutrients and microbes to the soil which increases the nutrient density of vegetables and fruits

“Compost is like a sponge that helps soil retail moisture.”
Kiss the Ground, Netflix

Click here to learn more about what food scraps can and can’t be composted.

There are 3 options for what to do with your compost each week once it’s collected:

1. Create your our own compost pile. Depending on what size yard you have, and how much time and patience you have are at your disposal, you may decide to set-up your own compost pile, or purchase and manage a compost bin. Bins are sold at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Amazon, and most big box stores. YouTube has a large number of “How To” videos that will guide you. Warning, there’s a bit of science and math involved. You’ll have to keep track of green and brown ratio, etc. And compost piles often attract wildlife that will have to be managed.

2. Compost Drop off. Most communities now have at least one compost drop-off location. Drop-off works well for a household of one, possibly two people, but families will likely prefer signing up for compost collection service.

3. Compost collection service. The Compost Crew provides weekly curbside pick-up throughout metro Washington DC. They are a great example of the evolution of the composting industry and a model for how the industry has taken off as millions of us rush to change our daily habits to minimize our impact on the environment and become more sustainable. Hopefully, laws will be passed soon requiring composting in all communities.

Below are the questions I asked Compost Crew’s Dan Israel, Senior VP, Sales & Marketing, in order to provide the public with insights into the how a composting collection service operates.

When did you start Compost Crew? Compost Crew was started in 2011. Last year, we celebrated our 10 year anniversary and received proclamations from both the State of Maryland and Montgomery County.

In a few sentences can you explain how you got off the ground. (How did you find funding?) The company was originally self-funded. In 2018, Ben Parry purchased Compost Crew and became our CEO. Last year, we raised additional funds for further expansion from several investors including Exelon’s Climate Change Investment Initiative (2c2i).

Who were your first customers? Compost Crew originally started by servicing homes in Montgomery County. Over the years we have expanded geographically into the District of Columbia, Baltimore, Northern Virginia and much of the surrounding area. We have also expanded to serve commercial customers like grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, senior living communities and property management firms.

How did the growth happen? We’re now in our 11th year. There’s so much opportunity in front of us – the region produces 700,000 tons of food waste each year, and only a fraction of that is composted. So, we expect to be able to keep growing.

Two states and DC are a unique arrangement. Different laws, different climate action plans, different levels of urgency. Which communities and which state have/has best existing legislation that supports composting?Maryland passed a law last year that will require large waste generators to compost their food waste, starting in 2023. Ben (our CEO) spoke in front of both the House of Delegates and the Senate in support of this legislation. Outside our region, California’s new composting bill requires all businesses and residents to compost their food waste – we want to work with DC, Maryland and Virginia to make that a reality in our region.

Do you plan to grow down to Fredericksburg and out to Gainesville or is your goal to have more customers sign up in your established area? We see plenty of opportunity to grow within our existing service area. Many homes and businesses still throw their food waste in the trash, which is a missed opportunity to recycle these materials into nutrient-rich compost. Having said that, we’re open to expanding into other communities, particularly in partnership with local governments.

Have you ever tried to win over Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill as a customer? While we generally don’t discuss the work we may do for specific customers, we have seen significant growth in the number of area office buildings and other businesses using our composting services over the past year. And we’re always happy to speak to anyone about the benefits of composting at their workplace.

How much does the service cost? Our standard residential rate is $32 per month for weekly curbside collection. Many neighborhoods have lower rates, based on large numbers of homes who have signed up for our service as a community. Our rates for businesses depend on the amount of food waste and the frequency of collection.

What did I forget to ask, or what additional information would you like readers to know? Compost Crew has begun building distributed composting facilities in the region, including our first one at One Acre Farm. We call them our Compost Outposts. We’re aiming to put more of these Compost Outposts around the region, in partnership with farms, schools and local municipalities, to process the food scraps closer to where they are generated. That will reduce the amount of resources spent hauling the food scraps and will make our communities more resilient.

Twice a year, spring and fall, Compost Crew delivers a bag of finished compost to your doorstep to use in your yard, or for your house plants. You may decide to share with neighbors and encourage them to compost as well. Our future will become much brighter when everyone is composting.

Treehugger named Compost Crew the “Best Composting Service in DC, 2020.” Congratulations, Compost Crew! Keep up the great work.

“The future? What future? You’ve got to be worried about NOW”

on January 11, 2022January 12, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 11, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; image by AdobeStock

At his Glasgow speech during COP26, Vijay Prashad eviscerated the West with an impassioned rebuke of colonialism, and our “middle class, bourgeois, Western slogan” that states how worried we are about the future. There are “2.7 billion who can’t eat NOW,” the Indian historian raged to a stunned crowd. Prashad’s fiery speech went viral. “The United States, 4-5% of world population, still uses 25% of its resources.”

Prashad’s charged coup de grace never made it into the Western mainstream media news cycles during this twelve day gathering of global leaders. The critical points he was thundering, and striving to communicate to the West, are valid, though, and need to be absorbed into our consciousness.

Our excesses, and our warped perspective, are harming billions of people.

Vijay Prashad is Executive-Director of Tricontinental: Institute of Social Resreach, a journalist commentator, and former professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut from 1996-2017. Maybe it was Prashad’s Trinity professorship that had me so transfixed as I listened to his impassioned wake-up call. Trinity College was my old stomping grounds from 1997-1998. I lived nearby and visited campus regularly. Perhaps that’s the reason why Prashad’s message resonates so strongly with me now, our being at the same place at the same time, back when all of our futures were so much brighter. Back when Americans could have changed the course of human events had we only paid attention to the scientists and acted.

“There is hope. In these moments of darkness, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Assad, COP26 Commentator in Glasgow introducing Vijay Prashad

Prashad’s fury stems from what he referred to as the West’s “colonialism,” and our lecturing others about how to behave, insisting that others reduce consumption, and how our hypocrisy has left 2.7 billion innocent people starving with many children going days without food.

Prashad unleashed his contempt for Western colonialism as a permanent condition in two ways:

Colonial mentality. From Prashad’s perspective, the US and the West tell others that others are responsible for the global climate crisis. “The US will never accept that they’re to blame.” The West comes up with catchy phrases like “We’re all in this together.” But Pershad assured his Glasgow audience that “We’re NOT in this together.” The US outsources the production of most of our products: phones, buckets, nuts and blots, etc. Our excessive consumption, with production in foreign countries, destroys these foreign landscapes and pollutes their air, and then we lecture them about polluting.

Our excessive consumption, and inability to restrain ourselves, destroys these foreign landscapes and pollutes their air, and then we have the gall to lecture them about polluting.
Colonial structures and institutions. Prashad reminded listeners that between 1765 — 1938 the British Isles stole £45 trillion sterling from India, destroyed the landscape, forced coal on India, and now lends India’s money back to India as debt. “No, it’s OUR money. You gave us our money back as debt and then you lecture us about how we should live.”

Prashad’s outrage should cause us to each take stock. Excessive consumption in the US should not come at the expense of 2.7 billion people on the brink of starvation, many of whom are children. The simmering anger that vulnerable countries feel, countries who didn’t contribute to the climate crisis, but are already suffering permanent negative impacts, (while millions of Americans act oblivious and refuse to change their habits), may soon become a national security concern. Not only our actions, but also our inaction. Prashad’s hair-raising indignation is a warning bell for the West, particularly the US.

Democratic leaders have become advocates for climate justice and equity, as communities create climate action plans to guide us through climate mitigation and adaptation and reaching a 50% cut in CO2 by 2030. But they can’t stop there. And neither can we as individuals.

Fairfax County’s Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan (CECAP) highlights the importance of protecting the most vulnerable. It established the One Fairfax Policy that declares that every Fairfax County resident, no matter what personal characteristics, deserves an equal opportunity to succeed.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 246 was announced on January 7, 2022 and emphasizes the significance of ensuring environmental justice and equity in North Carolina’s transition to clean energy.

Additionally, Prashad’s warning about the extreme harm of colonial institutions, such as banks, on the vulnerable should be addressed immediately through legislation and the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau (FCPB). US banks charge excessive overdraft fees and refuse to make exceptions regarding waving fees for situations like Covid or extreme weather events, mail delays, a whole host of challenges in this new 1.2ºC world we live in. Banks are literally profiting on the most vulnerable’s financial distress. Tragically, this is so American, and is one of the reasons why we’re despised around the world during what is quickly becoming a life-threatening emergency for billions of people TODAY, not tomorrow.

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Don’t Worry, Military Has BIG Plan to Cut It’s Big Carbon Footprint

on January 9, 2022January 15, 2022 By Gallant Gold Media

Washington (GGM) Analysis | January 9, 2022, by Noreen Wise, Founder & CEO of Gallant Gold Media, and author; image by AdobeStock

The US military is ranked number 55 out of the world’s largest carbon polluters (2019). According to Forbes Magazine, the DOD has emitted more than 1.2 GtC (billion metric tons of carbon) since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The military is the largest fossil fuel energy consumer in the US, and is the single biggest buyer of crude oil on the planet. But all of these missteps are about to change.

Although, seven military bases have already transitioned to solar, military outposts around the globe are often in remote locations without easy access to electricity. Constructing large solar arrays for these facilities, isn’t feasible. But, sticking with petroleum isn’t the solution either.

The military has been in search of an energy source that has limited infrastructure that it can tap into from any of its far-flung locations around the world. Enter the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) that appears to have the solution. A set of satellite-mounted solar arrays that harnesses energy on orbit and transmits it back to Earth. Just the type of innovation John Doerr advocates in Speed & Scale, An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.

I loved hearing from people who had far out ideas and plans for catching lightning in a bottle.
Eric Toone, Executive Managing Director and Science Lead, Breakthrough Energy Ventures — Speed & Scale

This innovative concept is referred to as SSPIDR, Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research. It will be manufactured by military contractor Northrup Grumman with tests projected to begin as soon as 2024, and an on-orbit demonstration by 2025.

SSPIDR technology:

captures carbon from sun
converts to radio frequency (RF) on orbit
transmits back to Earth
once on land, converts to rectenna (rectifying antenna)

Northrup Grumman received an award of $100 million to apply to the conversion of solar-to-RF. But that’s not the only contractor involved. Other companies will create the deployable space structures, and lightweight high-efficiency solar cells, etc.

The concern that has the engineers scrambling, is the weight. Everything will have to be miniaturized to keep the weight and bulk down. The entire structure will have to be condensed into a launch payload.

According to Defense News, SSPIDR communications officer Rachel Delaney said that AFRL’s goal is to produce 1,000kW of power from the SSPIDR structures, which per the Naval Research Laboratory is sufficient to run a forward operating base. SSPIDR needs to increase the surface area of the solar arrays, and boost the efficiency of the solar cells, to produce the amount of power engineers are looking for.

Space Solar Power (SSP), as a sustainable energy alternative, has been on the minds of sc-fi enthusiasts for decades. According to Cosmos, The Science of Everything, first mention of such an evocative solution was in Isaac Asimov’s 1941 work, “Reason,” in which two robots, Powell and Donovan, transmit energy to various planets through microwave beams. With access to the sun 24/7, and orbiting above the intense hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and other extreme weather events on the horizon, space solar will be significantly advantageous.

Check back each week for new climate optimism articles featuring innovative solutions that will help solve the climate crisis.

Subscribe to Act Now to stay connected to the insights we provide in our effort to accelerate the transition to a sustainable, eco-friendly, carbon neutral global community. Click here to subscribe.