Bitcoin Could Churn Out 130 Million Tons Of Carbon, Undermining Climate Action. Here’s One Way To Tackle That emission

The power demands and carbon emissions of bitcoin mining could undermine global efforts to combat climate change if stringent regulations are not placed upon the industry, a Chinese study has found. By 2024, mining of the cryptocurrency in China alone could use as much power as the entire nation of Italy uses in a year, with greenhouse gas emissions equalling those of the Czech Republic.

But rather than recommending increased taxation on bitcoin mining to curb emissions, or simply an outright ban on the practice, the paper, published today in the journal Nature, suggests that miners should be encouraged to shift their operations to regions that provide abundant low-carbon electricity.

The research is significant because China carries out at least 65% of the world’s bitcoin operations. Shouyang Wang, one of the report’s authors and chair professor at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told Forbes.com:

“While everyone has focused on bitcoin’s great profitability, we want people to become more aware of its potential issues and start thinking about these questions: is this industry actually worth the associated environmental impact, and how can we make profitable bitcoin mining operation more sustainable in the future?”

Using simulation-based models, the researchers found that, short of any policy interventions, bitcoin mining in China will peak in 2024 consuming 296.59 terawatt hours of electricity—as much as a medium sized country—and generate 130.50 million metric tons of carbon emissions. The authors further note that this consumption and the resulting emissions could derail China’s efforts to decarbonize its own energy system.

“It is important to note that the adoption of this disruptive and promising technique without [taking into account] environmental concerns may pose a barrier to the worldwide effort on GHG emissions management in the near future,” Wang said, adding that the research team was “surprised by the energy consumption and carbon emission assessment results of bitcoin blockchain operation in China.”

But the solution to the challenge, the authors argue, is “moving away from the current punitive carbon tax policy to a site regulation policy”—in essence, ensuring that mining operations move to areas that guarantee high rates of renewable electricity. Under such a policy, they found, only 20% of bitcoin miners remained in coal-intensive energy regions, resulting in lower carbon emissions per dollar earned, compared to a higher taxation scenario.

Under the site regulation model, the researchers found bitcoin operations generated 100.61 million metric tons at peak, as opposed to 105.19 million tons under an additional taxation scenario. Wang said government regulation of the industry was needed, but that bitcoin miners would likely be amenable to his team’s proposed solution.

“Site regulation should be carried out by the government, placing limitations on bitcoin mining in certain regions that use coal-based heavy energy,” Wang explained. “That being said, we think that there are enough benefits to this policy which will incentivize the miners to move their operation willingly. For example, since energy prices in clean-energy regions of China are lower than that in heavy-energy regions, the miners can effectively lower their individual energy consumption cost, which would increase their profitability.”

That isn’t to say, however, that regulation is the only method by which China should be reducing the emissions impact from bitcoin mining. “The government should also focus on upgrading the power generation facilities in clean-energy regions to ensure a consistent energy generation,” Wang said. “That way, the miners would definitely have more incentives to move voluntarily.”

Crunching The Numbers

Bitcoin operates by using blockchain technology—publicly recorded peer-to-peer transfers on encrypted computer networks—which eliminates the need for centralized authorities or banks. Bitcoin miners use arrays of processors to determine results to algorithmic puzzles that verify transactions that are added to the blockchain, for which they are in turn rewarded in bitcoins.

With the value of a single bitcoin having risen from $1 in April 2011 to around $60,000 in April 2021, and with yesterday’s news that the value of the cryptocurrency market has exceeded $2 trillion for the first time, the financial incentives to mine bitcoin are obvious.

But there is a finite supply of bitcoins: they are limited to 21 million in total. To control the currency’s circulation, the supply of new bitcoins is halved every four years, which also halves the miners’ rewards. This has helped ignite fierce competition, attracting an increasing number of bitcoin miners to get into the race, utilizing ever more powerful processing arrays requiring more electricity.

So, in at least one sense, bitcoin is self-regulating. Or as Wang puts it, “this is the industry’s natural built-in way of phasing itself out.”

Silver Linings?

It has until recently proved difficult to determine the total emissions impact of bitcoin mining. Industry advocates have long claimed that miners tend to rely on low-carbon energy due to its relatively low cost, but those claims have been disputed.

Now, using more advanced modeling techniques, Chinese researchers have been able to more accurately estimate the energy uses of specific industry operations. According to the China Emissions Accounts and Datasets platform (CEAD), for example, bitcoin mining accounts for more than 5.4% of emissions from electricity generation in China.

In response, various policy solutions have been suggested, including heavier taxation of bitcoin mining operations. The new research suggests site regulation could be the preferable option. But did Wang think this could result in too many miners moving into areas with abundant renewables, gobbling up energy supply?

“There would be an influx of bitcoin miners into clean-energy regions,” he said. “However, we don’t think that this increase in bitcoin mining operations would place burdens on the local energy grid. The energy-generation infrastructures in the clean-energy regions of China are still being improved and developed … we think that increases in energy generation capacity would outpace the increase in bitcoin mining operations in these regions, which would reduce the potential burdens.”

Even so, with a forecast of 100 million tons of carbon emissions at the industry’s peak, would it not simply be better, in environmental terms, to ban the practice outright?

“We think that simply banning bitcoin mining altogether is not ideal,” Wang said. “Even if bitcoin mining is completely banned, its increasing profitability would drive miners to continue their activities through other measures, such as stealing electricity. That is why we are suggesting a push for moving the miners to clean renewable energy regions would be more ideal.”

Asked whether future cryptocurrency operations could potentially result in the same or similar energy demands as bitcoin, Wang offered a note of optimism.

“Cryptocurrency communities have become increasingly aware of the carbon emissions generated through mining activities,” he said. “As a result … we think the development of these new consensus algorithms would improve the energy efficiency of cryptocurrency mining activities, which would be beneficial for China’s sustainability efforts.”

 

My key interests are in decarbonization and the development of circular economies.

Source: Bitcoin Could Churn Out 130 Million Tons Of Carbon, Undermining Climate Action. Here’s One Way To Tackle That

.

Related contents:

Kenya: EABL Set to Reduce Its Carbon Emissions By 95% Annually AllAfrica

08:35
08:27
02:12
23:49 Wed, 23 Nov
20:36 Wed, 23 Nov
19:31 Wed, 23 Nov
17:41 Wed, 23 Nov
17:11 Wed, 23 Nov
15:42 Wed, 23 Nov
15:38 Wed, 23 Nov
14:45 Wed, 23 Nov
14:35 Wed, 23 Nov
14:12 Wed, 23 Nov
14:04 Wed, 23 Nov
20:32 Tue, 22 Nov
20:23 Tue, 22 Nov
15:17 Tue, 22 Nov
15:03 Tue, 22 Nov
13:25 Tue, 22 Nov
05:21 Tue, 22 Nov
00:37 Tue, 22 Nov
23:30 Mon, 21 Nov
21:52 Mon, 21 Nov
17:48 Mon, 21 Nov
17:35 Mon, 21 Nov
.
Marketing Programs To Buy:
10 Bold Actions In Positive Life     https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383942/
3D Pal Toons     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381689/
4brandcommercial        https://jvz1.com/c/202927/375487
7 Minutes Kit      https://jvz8.com/c/202927/374505/
9 figure Success        https://jvz8.com/c/202927/384653/
Ad Raven      https://jvz4.com/c/202927/382796/
Ada leadz     https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376381
ADA Web      https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383751/
AdRaven       https://jvz3.com/c/202927/382851/
Adsense Machine      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/290487
Adtivate Agency      https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383700/
AdvertSuite     https://jvz1.com/c/202927/335011/
AdzHero     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/366972/
AffiliateMatic     https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381148/
Agency Client Finder    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/384619/
AgencyScale      https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383111/
AIWA Commercial     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/365061
ALL-in-One HD Stock    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381560
Animaxime    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383307/
Appimize      https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370227
Appoint B Agency     https://jvz1.com/c/202927/384630/
Appointomatic      https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374258
Appowls    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381231/
Art Of Living    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/382425/
Audiencetoolkit     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/302715
Aweber Crash Course     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383057/
Backlinkindexer    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/88118
BettingMaster      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/387079/
BevTraders    http://www.bevtraders.com/?ref=arminham
Big Audio Club     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/380087/
BigAudio Club    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380877/
Boost Optimism   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380692/
BrandElevate   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381807/
BrandElevate   https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381812
Bybit     https://www.bybit.com/en-US/invite?ref=ALEXP
CanvaKitz    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/379051/
ChatterPal    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/324615
Clientfinda   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370806
Clipsreel   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/372682
Commission smasher   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/376879
Content Gorilla   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/330783
Content Tool Kit   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/329145/
contentGenie   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/387717/
CourseAlly eLearning   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/384759/
CourseReel   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/355249
Courserious   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/360397/
Coursova   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376527
Creaitecontent  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376986
Credit Repair   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/377815/
Cryptokit    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/383809/
CryptoRocket    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/378113/
CryptoUnderworld     https://jvz8.com/c/202927/374345/
Dealcheck     https://dealcheck.io?fp_ref=armin16
DesignaSuite      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/297271
DesignBeast    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/371547
DevelopSelfEmpowerment     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383094/
DFYContentClub     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381337/
DFYSuite   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381194/
Diabetes Guide    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/358870/
Diddly Pay’s    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/315596
Diet fitness diabetes   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/286851
Domainname    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377005
Dominate Email   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/386980/
Dropshiply   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383483/
DUX Forex Signals   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/128215/
EBook Agency    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/384573/
Ejaculation Total   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/75989/
Email Monetizer    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/386337/
EngagerMate  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/328172
EngageYard   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383051/
Explaindio    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/123757/
Extreme Adz   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/379244/
Extreme Coupon  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/216101/
EZ Local Appointment  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/385180/
EZDeals  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/377689/
Ezy  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381935/
Ezy MultiStores  https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381935
Facebook Cash Machine   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/382333/
Facedrip  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376325/
FaceSwap   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381768/
Fade To Black   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/344541
Fanpage  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/144349
Fitness Nutrition   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/353334/
Followup Builder   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/386313/
Forex Atlatian   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/25069/
Forex Blizz   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/144577/
Forex Blue Stark  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/47481/
Forex expert   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376877
Forex Hybrid Scalper    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/95037/
Forex Joustar   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381617/
Forex Mastery   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/144621/
Forex Scouts   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/132677/
forrk  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/373449
FusionMT4    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/372523/
FX Goldminer  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381439/
Galactic  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/188236/
Gaming job   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/184902  s
Genesis Mining   https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/2535466
Gluten free   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/296191
GMB Magic  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377194
Graphic Alta  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/324492/
Heal Your Emptiness   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384848/
High Converting Emails  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/386305/
HostLegends    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/384774/
Hostley Domain Creator   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379223/
Human Synthesys Studio  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/367353/
ImageX   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/363237/
IMSyndicator  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/370769
Inboxr   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/312692
Insta Keyword    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/351606/
Instant Website   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377557
InstantWebsiteBundle          https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377557
iTraffic X  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/320466
keysearch  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/194909
KlickCourse   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/385006/
Klippyo Kreators  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/327447
KoinCart   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383555/
Leadvalet   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/385580/
LegalSuites   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/388896/
Levidio Royal Podcasting   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384025/
Linkable DFY   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/385873/
Linkomatic  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380937/
LiteTrading   https://www.litefinance.com/?uid=929237543
Live Your Truth  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379020
Living An Intentional Life    https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/382455
Living an International Life    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/382455/
Local Leader   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383751/
Local Sites   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/380543/
LocalAgencyBox  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/359468
LocalCentric   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/379339/
LocalioAI    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/378310/
MarketAll      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/386971/
Marketingblocks     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374934
MarketPresso   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/369837
Massfluence  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/386885/
Mat1 Simple Funnel   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380197/
Maxslides  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376842
Mech Forex Robot   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383447/
MediaCloudPro   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/343635
Megasuite   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383953/
Mobi First   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/353694/
Motion Kingdom Studio  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383177/
Movid Animation  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/380385/
MT4Code System   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376925
My Passive Income   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/384099/
MyMailIt   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/292919
MyTrafficJacker   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/353558
Next Drive  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/371095/
NichBox  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/370705/
Organic Life Guide  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/366872/
Pcommerce   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/372265/
Phemex  https://phemex.com/register-vt1?referralCode=D8HUS2
Photokit  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/373207/
PicsAds   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/385468/
PigMoneyMethod   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377665/
Pipstock    http://pipstockexchange.com/register?ref=204
Pitchdeck   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/347847/
Pixal  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/378775/
PixaStudio    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/373089/
Pixivid   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/385213/
PlanB Muscle Growth   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/36517/
PlayerNeos   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376962
Podcast Advantage   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/379995/
Podcast Masterclass  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/379998/
PodKastr    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/369500/
PopLinks    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/368095/
Postradamus     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/108695
Power Reviews    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/384625/
Powrsuite   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376361
PR Rage  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/343405
Prime Stocks   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/369164
Profile mate    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/358049
Promovidz   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/375692/
Push Button Traffic   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/301402
QR Verse   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383865/
Quintex Capital     https://quintexcapital.com/?ref=arminham
Quit Smoking    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/359081/
QuizMatic   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/387116/
Reputor   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/380159/
ReVideo  https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381761
ReviewReel   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/382663/
Rewriter   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/353373/
RSI SEO   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384381/
Scriptdio   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/385387/
Seniors Income    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383888/
Senuke  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/279944
ShopABot   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/291955
ShopFunnels   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/384069/
SocialAgency360   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/385357/
SociCake  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/321987
Socifeed   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375706
SociJam  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/309649
Soronity  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/368736
SqribbleEbook   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/283867
Stackable Picture   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/385046/
Steven Alvey’s   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/351754
Stoodaio   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/372094
Storymate    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/320972
StoryReel   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/387813/
StreamPilot   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/385431/
Studioninja   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/374965
Sunday Freebie  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/267113/
Super backdrop   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524
Survai    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/380933/
Syndranker    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/378143/
Talkingfaces   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/375550
The Internet Marketing   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/289944
Tonai Voice Content   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/383119/
Toon Video Maker    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/357201
TrafficForU   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381950/
Trendio  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381003/
TubePal   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379863/
Tubeserp   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/370472
TubeTargeter  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377211
TuneMingo    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/386556/
TV Boss Fire  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379480/
Ultrafunnels A.I   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381129/
VIADZ Ad Template  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/379307/
Vidcentric   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/376095
Viddeyo    https://jvz6.com/c/202927/382326/
Videevolve   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381011/
Vidently   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/387798/
Video Campaignor      https://jvz4.com/c/202927/387058/
Video Games   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/184902/
VideoEnginePro     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/372916
VideoGameSuite    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/366537/
VideoRobot Enterprise   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/291061
VidKreate   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/386029/
VidMingo   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/378359/
VidRaffle   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/386840/
VidSnatcher    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/342585
VidVoicer    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379983/
Vidzura   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/385754/
Viral dash   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375959
Viral Quotes      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/386984/
VirtualReel   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376849
Vocalic  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383848/
VoiceBuddy    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/342854
VR Studio  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/388296/
WebCop  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/378683/
Webinarkit   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383937/
Webprimo   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379455/
WordPress Mastery   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/386249/
WowBackgraounds   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381556/
WP GDPR    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/299907
WP Simulator    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/46987/
Writer Arc   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/386602/
writing job   https://jvz8.com/c/202927/213027
XBrain Forex   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/372305/
XFUNNELS   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/310335
Xinemax  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381749/
YoDrive   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/384700/
YoSeller   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/387544/
Your 3DPal   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381685/
YTSuite   https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381179
Zappable   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/367328/

Cancer Rules Rewritten By Air Pollution Discovery

Image source, Getty Images

The team at the Francis Crick Institute in London showed that rather than causing damage, air pollution was waking up old damaged cells. One of the world’s leading experts, Prof Charles Swanton, said the breakthrough marked a “new era”. And it may now be possible to develop drugs that stop cancers forming. The findings could explain how hundreds of cancer-causing substances act on the body.

The classical view of cancer starts with a healthy cell. It acquires more and more mutations in its genetic code, or DNA, until it reaches a tipping point. Then it becomes a cancer and grows uncontrollably. But there are problems with this idea: cancerous mutations are found in seemingly healthy tissue, and many substances known to cause cancer – including air pollution – don’t seem to damage people’s DNA.

So what is going on?

The researchers who also work at University College London, have produced evidence of a different idea. The damage is already there in our cell’s DNA, picked up as we grow and age, but something needs to pull the trigger that actually makes it cancerous.

The discovery came from exploring why non-smokers get lung cancer. The overwhelming majority of lung cancers are caused by smoking but still, one in 10 cases in the UK is down to air pollution. The Crick scientists focused on a form of pollution called particulate matter 2.5 (known as PM2.5), which is far smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Through a series of detailed human and animal experiments they showed:

  • Places with higher levels of air pollution had more lung cancers not caused by smoking
  • Breathing in PM2.5 leads to the release of a chemical alarm – interleukin-1-beta – in the lungs
  • This causes inflammation and activates cells in the lungs to help repair any damage
  • But around one in every 600,000 cells in the lungs of a 50-year-old already contains potentially cancerous mutations
  • These are acquired as we age but appear completely healthy until they are activated by the chemical alarm and become cancerous

Crucially, the researchers were able to stop cancers forming in mice exposed to air pollution by using a drug that blocks the alarm signal. The results are a double breakthrough, both for understanding the impact of air pollution and the fundamentals of how we get cancer.

Dr Emilia Lim, one of the researchers who is based at the Crick and UCL, said people who had never smoked but developed lung cancer often had no idea why. “To give them some clues about how this might work is really, really important,” she said. “It’s super-important – 99% of people in the world live in places where air pollution exceeds the WHO guidelines so it really impacts all of us.”

Rethinking cancer

But the results also showed mutations alone are not always enough to cause cancer. It can need an extra element. Prof Swanton said this was the most exciting finding his lab had come across, as it “actually rethinks our understanding of how tumours are initiated”. He said it would lead to a “new era” of molecular cancer prevention.

The idea of taking a cancer-blocking pill if you live in a heavily polluted area is not completely fanciful. Doctors have already trialled an interleukin-1-beta drug in cardiovascular disease and found, by complete accident, they cut the risk of lung cancer. The latest findings are being presented to scientists at a conference of the European Society for Medical Oncology.

Speaking to the BBC from the conference, Prof Swanton said: “Pollution is a lovely example, but there are going to be 200 other examples of this over the next 10 years.”

And he said we needed to rethink how even smoking causes cancer – is it just the known DNA damage caused by the chemicals in tobacco or is the smoke causing inflammation, too? Curiously, the idea that mutated DNA is not enough and cancers need another trigger to grow was first proposed by scientist Isaac Berenblum in 1947.

“Philosophically, it’s fascinating. These incredible biologists have done this work 75 years ago and it’s largely been ignored,” said Dr Lim. Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, stressed that “smoking remains the biggest cause of lung cancer”.

But she added: “Science, which takes years of painstaking work, is changing our thinking around how cancer develops. We now have a much better understanding of the driving forces behind lung cancer.”

By: James Gallagher

Source: Cancer rules rewritten by air-pollution discovery – BBC News

Critics by ESMO

A new mechanism has been identified through which very small pollutant particles in the air may trigger lung cancer in people who have never smoked, paving the way to new prevention approaches and development of therapies, according to late-breaking data [to be] reported at the ESMO Congress 2022 by scientists of the Francis Crick Institute and University College London, funded by Cancer Research UK.

The particles, which are typically found in vehicle exhaust and smoke from fossil fuels, are associated with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) risk, accounting for over 250,000 lung cancer deaths globally per year. “The same particles in the air that derive from the combustion of fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change, are directly impacting human health via an important and previously overlooked cancer-causing mechanism in lung cells.

The risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking, but we have no control over what we all breathe. Globally, more people are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution than to toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and these new data link the importance of addressing climate health to improving human health,” said Charles Swanton, the Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research UK Chief Clinician, London, UK, who will present the research results at the ESMO 2022 Presidential Symposium on Saturday, 10 September.

The new findings are based on human and laboratory research on mutations in a gene called EGFR which are seen in about half of people with lung cancer who have never smoked. In a study of nearly half a million people living in England, South Korea and Taiwan, exposure to increasing concentrations of airborne particulate matter (PM) 2.5 micrometres (μm) in diameter was linked to increased risk of NSCLC with EGFR mutations.

In the laboratory studies, the  Francis Crick Institute scientists showed that the same pollutant particles (PM2.5) promoted rapid changes in airway cells which had mutations in EGFR and in another gene linked to lung cancer called KRAS, driving them towards a cancer stem cell like state. They also found that air pollution drives the influx of macrophages which release the inflammatory mediator, interleukin-1β, driving the expansion of cells with the EGFR mutations in response to exposure to PM2.5, and that blockade of interleukin-1β inhibited lung cancer initiation.

These findings were consistent with data from a previous large clinical trial showing a dose dependent reduction in lung cancer incidence when people were treated with the anti-IL1β antibody, canakinumab. In a final series of experiments, the Francis Crick team used state-of-the-art, ultradeep mutational profiling of small samples of normal lung tissue and found EGFR and KRAS driver mutations in 18% and 33% of normal lung samples, respectively.

“We found that driver mutations in EGFR and KRAS genes, commonly found in lung cancers, are actually present in normal lung tissue and are a likely consequence of ageing. In our research, these mutations alone only weakly potentiated cancer in laboratory models. However, when lung cells with these mutations were exposed to air pollutants, we saw more cancers and these occurred more quickly than when lung cells with these mutations were not exposed to pollutants, suggesting that air pollution promotes the initiation of lung cancer in cells harbouring driver gene mutations.

The next step is to discover why some lung cells with mutations become cancerous when exposed to pollutants while others don’t,” said Swanton. Commenting on the results, Tony Mok, Chinese University of Hong Kong, not involved in the study, said: “This research is intriguing and exciting as it means that we can ask whether, in the future, it will be possible to use lung scans to look for pre-cancerous lesions in the lungs and try to reverse them with medicines such as interleukin-1β inhibitors.

We don’t yet know whether it will be possible to use highly sensitive EGFR profiling on blood or other samples to find non-smokers who are predisposed to lung cancer and may benefit from lung scanning, so discussions are still very speculative.” Like Swanton, he stresses the importance of reducing air pollution to lower the risk of lung diseases, including cancer.

“We have known about the link between pollution and lung cancer for a long time, and we now have a possible explanation for it. As consumption of fossil fuels goes hand in hand with pollution and carbon emissions, we have a strong mandate for tackling these issues – for both environmental and health reasons,” Mok concluded.

Related contents:

Legal Agreement Spurs EPA to Take Stronger Steps to Reduce Smog Pollution in Areas of Five States With Some of Nation’s … Center for Biological Diversity (Press Release)Air pollution worsen in Metro Manila The Manila Times

20:32 Fri, 16 Sep
18:11 Fri, 16 Sep
17:29 Fri, 16 Sep
16:56 Fri, 16 Sep
16:13 Fri, 16 Sep
15:31 Fri, 16 Sep
06:14 Fri, 16 Sep
04:43 Fri, 16 Sep
03:42 Fri, 16 Sep
03:33 Fri, 16 Sep
01:14 Fri, 16 Sep
00:53 Fri, 16 Sep
23:53 Thu, 15 Sep
23:18 Thu, 15 Sep
20:23 Thu, 15 Sep
15:45 Thu, 15 Sep
12:25 Thu, 15 Sep
10:17 Thu, 15 Sep
09:39 Thu, 15 Sep
06:39 Thu, 15 Sep
04:27 Thu, 15 Sep
02:09 Thu, 15 Sep
01:47 Thu, 15 Sep
22:30 Wed, 14 Sep
21:40 Wed, 14 Sep
16:51 Wed, 14 Sep
15:17 Wed, 14 Sep
14:00 Wed, 14 Sep
13:55 Wed, 14 Sep
13:40 Wed, 14 Sep
22:56 Tue, 13 Sep
21:21 Tue, 13 Sep
20:16 Tue, 13 Sep
18:39 Tue, 13 Sep
18:05 Tue, 13 Sep
17:22 Tue, 13 Sep
17:08 Tue, 13 Sep
16:06 Tue, 13 Sep
14:45 Tue, 13 Sep
14:30 Tue, 13 Sep
11:39 Tue, 13 Sep

Online Marketing Apps To Buy:

Amazon Cash                         https://amzn.to/3SflFmy
Amazon Incentives                   https://amzn.to/3qI0jCx
10 Bold Actions In Positive Life & Work                https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383942/
360Apps                https://jvz2.com/c/202927/263380
3D Pal Toons                https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381689/
4brandcommercial        https://jvz1.com/c/202927/375487
7 Minutes Kit                    https://jvz8.com/c/202927/374505/
9 figure Success                        https://jvz8.com/c/202927/384653/
Ad Raven                       https://jvz4.com/c/202927/382796/
Ada leadz                           https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376381
ADA Web                        https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383751/
AdRaven                          https://jvz3.com/c/202927/382851/
Adsense Machine                  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/290487
Adtivate Agency                   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383706/
AdzHero                      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/366972/
AffiliateMatic                 https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381148/
Agency Client Finder                        https://jvz3.com/c/202927/384619/
AgencyScale                          https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383111/
Agencyscale                      https://jvz1.com/c/202927/383113/
AIWA Commercial              https://jvz2.com/c/202927/365061
AIWA22                           https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377907/
ALL-in-One HD Stock                   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381560
Animaxime                   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383307/
Appimize                            https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370227
Appoint B Agency                     https://jvz1.com/c/202927/384630/
Appointomatic               https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374258
Appowls                     https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381231/
AppOwls                https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381976/ Bundle
Art Of Living                       https://jvz4.com/c/202927/382425/
Audiencetoolkit              https://jvz6.com/c/202927/302715
Aweber Crash Course                     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383057/
Backlinkindexer           https://jvz6.com/c/202927/88118
BevTraders                               http://www.bevtraders.com/?ref=arminham
Big Audio Club                       https://jvz6.com/c/202927/380087/
BigAudio Club                   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380877/
Boost Optimism                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380692/
BrandElevate                  https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381812
BrandElevate                https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381807/
Bybit Crypto Trade                  https://www.bybit.com/en-US/invite?ref=ALEXP
CanvaKitz                     https://jvz4.com/c/202927/379051/
ChatterPal Commercial                 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/324615
Clientfinda                     https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370806
Clipsreel                             https://jvz3.com/c/202927/372682
Commission smasher          https://jvz3.com/c/202927/376879
Content Gorilla              https://jvz2.com/c/202927/330783
Content Tool Kit                     https://jvz3.com/c/202927/329145/
CourseAlly eLearning                      https://jvz4.com/c/202927/384759/
CourseReel                          https://jvz6.com/c/202927/355256/
CourseReel                        https://jvz2.com/c/202927/355249
Courserious                       https://jvz8.com/c/202927/360397/
Coursova                         https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376527
Creaitecontentcreator          https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376986
Credit Repair                        https://jvz8.com/c/202927/377815/
Crypto Kit                     https://jvz8.com/c/202927/383809/
Crypto Rocket                     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/378113/
Crypto Underworld                           https://jvz8.com/c/202927/374345/
Dealcheck                                  https://dealcheck.io?fp_ref=armin16
Design beast               https://jvz6.com/c/202927/371547
Designa Suite License                  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/297271
Develop Self Empowerment                 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383094/
DFY Content Club                 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381337/
DFY Suite                                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/337292
DFY Suite                      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381194/
DFY Suite                    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381194/
Diabetes Guide                       https://jvz2.com/c/202927/358870/
Diddly Pay’s DLCM                  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/315596
Diet fitness diabetes              https://jvz1.com/c/202927/286851
Domainname                  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377005
Dropshiply                   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383483/
DUX Forex Signals                        https://jvz3.com/c/202927/128215/
EBook Agency                        https://jvz2.com/c/202927/384573/
Ejaculation Total                     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/75989/
Email Monetizer                     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/386337/
EngagerMate                         https://jvz8.com/c/202927/328172
EngageYard                     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383051/
Extreme Adz                 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/379244/
Extreme Coupon                  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/216101/
EZ Local Appointmen                            https://jvz2.com/c/202927/385180/   t
Ezy                https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381935/
Ezy MultiStores               https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381935
Facebook Cash Machine                 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/382333/
Facedrip                          https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376325/
FaceSwap                 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381768/
Fade To Black                   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/344541
Fanpage                          https://jvz4.com/c/202927/144349
Fitness Nutrition                    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/353334/
Followup Builder                         https://jvz3.com/c/202927/386313/
Forex Atlatian                        https://jvz8.com/c/202927/25069/
Forex Blizz                             https://jvz8.com/c/202927/144577/
Forex Blue Stark                      https://jvz3.com/c/202927/47481/
Forex expert                   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376877
Forex Hybrid Scalper                        https://jvz6.com/c/202927/95037/
Forex Joustar                     https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381617/
Forex Joustar                  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381617/
Forex Mastery                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/144621/
Forex Scouts                         https://jvz6.com/c/202927/132677/
forrk                                              https://jvz1.com/c/202927/373449
FusionMT4                             https://jvz2.com/c/202927/372523/
FX Goldminer                      https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381439/
Galactic                         https://jvz1.com/c/202927/188236/
Gaming job                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/184902  s
Genesis Mining                         https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/2535466
Givvy Mobile Lottery             https://givvy-numbers.app.link/qNDZMGGbhsb
Gluten free                              https://jvz4.com/c/202927/296191
GMB Magic                        https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377194
Graphic Alta           https://jvz2.com/c/202927/324492/
Heal Your Emptiness                         https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384848/
High Converting Emails                  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/386305/
HostLegends                       https://jvz4.com/c/202927/384755/
Hostley Domain Creator                        https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379223/
Human Synthesys Studio                      https://jvz8.com/c/202927/367353/
ImageX                      https://jvz6.com/c/202927/363237/
IMSyndicator                   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/370769
Inboxr                            https://jvz2.com/c/202927/312692
Insta Keyword                https://jvz6.com/c/202927/351606/
Instant Website                https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377557
InstantWebsiteBundle          https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377557
iTraffic X                          https://jvz2.com/c/202927/320466
keysearch                                    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/194909
Klippyo Kreators                         https://jvz8.com/c/202927/327447
KoinCart                            https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383555/
Leadvalet                         https://jvz3.com/c/202927/385580/
Levidio Royal Podcasting                        https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384025/
Linkable DFY                       https://jvz6.com/c/202927/385873/
Linkomatic                            https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380937/
LiteTrading                                 https://www.litefinance.com/?uid=929237543
Live Your Truth                       https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379020
Living An Intentional Life              https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/382455
Living an International Life                  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/382455/
Local Leader                   https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383751/
Local Sites                  https://jvz4.com/c/202927/380543/
LocalAgencyBox                 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/359468
LocalCentric                            https://jvz2.com/c/202927/379339/
Marketingblocks             https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374934
MarketPresso                  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/369837
Mat1 Simple Funnel                            https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380197/
Maxslides                         https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376842
Mech Forex Robot                           https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383447/
MediaCloudPro                 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/343635
Megasuite                         https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383953/
Mobi First                          https://jvz2.com/c/202927/353694/
Motion Kingdom Studio                    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383177/
Movid Animation                     https://jvz6.com/c/202927/380385/
MT4Code System                  https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376925
My Passive Income                  https://jvz1.com/c/202927/384099/
MyMailIt                              https://jvz3.com/c/202927/292919
MyTrafficJacker               https://jvz2.com/c/202927/353558
Next Drive                      https://jvz4.com/c/202927/371095/
NichBox               https://jvz2.com/c/202927/370705/
Organic Life Guide                 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/366872/
Photokit                           https://jvz4.com/c/202927/373207/
PicsAds                         https://jvz2.com/c/202927/385468/
PigMoney Metho                     https://jvz4.com/c/202927/377665/   d
PigMoneyMethod                        https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377665/
Pitchdeck                      https://jvz3.com/c/202927/347847/
Pixal                     https://jvz2.com/c/202927/378775/
Pixivid                           https://jvz6.com/c/202927/385213/
PlanB Muscle Growth              https://jvz1.com/c/202927/36517/
PlayerNeos                 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376962
Podcast Advantage                        https://jvz8.com/c/202927/379995/
Podcast Advantage              https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379995/
Podcast Masterclass               https://jvz3.com/c/202927/379998/
PodKastr                 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/369500/
Postradamus                              https://jvz6.com/c/202927/108695
Power Reviews                     https://jvz8.com/c/202927/384625/
Powrsuite                       https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376361
PR Rage                        https://jvz4.com/c/202927/343405
prime stocks                              https://jvz8.com/c/202927/369164  prime stocks
Profile mate                           https://jvz4.com/c/202927/358049
Promovidz                      https://jvz8.com/c/202927/375692/
Push Button Traffic         https://jvz2.com/c/202927/301402
QR Verse                      https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383865/
Quintex Capital                         https://quintexcapital.com/?ref=arminham
Quit Smoking                           https://jvz3.com/c/202927/359081/
Reputor                 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/380159/
ReVideo                     https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381761
ReviewReel                        https://jvz6.com/c/202927/382663/
Rewriter                      https://jvz4.com/c/202927/353373/
RSI SEO                              https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384381/
Scriptdio                       https://jvz4.com/c/202927/385387/
Seniors Income                        https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383888/
Senuke                                  https://jvz6.com/c/202927/279944
ShopABot                           https://jvz2.com/c/202927/291955
ShopFunnels                        https://jvz3.com/c/202927/384069/
SocialAgency360                 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/385357/
SociCake                       https://jvz2.com/c/202927/321987
Socifeed                          https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375706
SociJam                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/309649
Soronity                                 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/368736
SqribbleEbook                 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/283867
Stackable Picture                        https://jvz1.com/c/202927/385046/
Steven Alvey’s                      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/351754
Stoodaio                                    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/372094
Storymate                         https://jvz3.com/c/202927/320972
StreamPilot                        https://jvz2.com/c/202927/385431/
Studioninja                       https://jvz1.com/c/202927/374965
Sunday Freebie                             https://jvz1.com/c/202927/267113/
Super backdrop                https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524
Superbackdrop                 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524
Survai                      https://jvz8.com/c/202927/380933/
Syndranker                          https://jvz3.com/c/202927/378143/
Talkingfaces                      https://jvz2.com/c/202927/375358
Talkingfaces                    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/375550
The Internet Marketing                https://jvz2.com/c/202927/289944
Tonai Voice Content           https://jvz8.com/c/202927/383119/
Toon Video Maker                   https://jvz2.com/c/202927/357201
TrafficFor                https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381950/
TrafficForU                   https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381950/
Trendio                       https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381003/
TubePal                        https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379863/
Tubeserp                        https://jvz3.com/c/202927/370472
TubeTargeter                   https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377211
TV Boss Fire                https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379480/
Ultrafunnels A.I                 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381129/
VIADZ Ad Template                    https://jvz4.com/c/202927/379307/
Vidcentric                             https://jvz4.com/c/202927/376095
Viddeyo                                https://jvz6.com/c/202927/382326/
Videevolve                       https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381011/
Video Games                            https://jvz3.com/c/202927/184902/
VideoEnginePro                https://jvz2.com/c/202927/372916
VideoGameSuite                     https://jvz3.com/c/202927/366537/
VideoRobot Enterprise                https://jvz8.com/c/202927/291061
VidKreate                        https://jvz6.com/c/202927/386029/
VidMingo                           https://jvz6.com/c/202927/378359/
VidSnatcher                           https://jvz3.com/c/202927/342585
VidVoicer                      https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379983/
Vidzura                       https://jvz4.com/c/202927/385754/
Viral dash                            https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375959
VirtualReel                       https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376849
Vocalic                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383848/
VoiceBuddy                      https://jvz1.com/c/202927/342854
WebCop                         https://jvz4.com/c/202927/378683/
Webinarkit                       https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383937/
Webprimo                   https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379455/   Website Builder
WordPress Mastery                       https://jvz1.com/c/202927/386249/
WOW Backgrounds                      https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381615/
WowBackgraounds                       https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381556/
WP GDPR                                https://jvz8.com/c/202927/299907
WP Simulator                    https://jvz3.com/c/202927/46987/
writing job                                  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/213027
XBrain Forex                           https://jvz3.com/c/202927/372305/
XFUNNELS                         https://jvz2.com/c/202927/310335
Xinemax                    https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381749/
YoDrive                    https://jvz2.com/c/202927/384700/
Your 3DPal                https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381685/
YTSuite                       https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381179

Eating Too Much Protein Makes Pee a Problem Pollutant In The U.S.

In the U.S., people eat more protein than they need to. And though it might not be bad for human health, this excess does pose a problem for the country’s waterways. The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests.

When we overconsume protein—whether it comes from lentils, supplements or steak—our body breaks the excess down into urea, a nitrogen-containing compound that exits the body via urine and ultimately ends up in sewage. Maya Almaraz, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues wanted to see how much of this nitrogen is being flushed into the U.S. sewage system because of a protein-heavy diet.

The researchers combined population data and previous work on how much excess protein the average American eats and found that the majority of nitrogen pollution present in wastewater—some 67 to 100 percent—is a by-product of what people consume. “We think a lot about sewage nitrogen. We know that’s an issue,” Almaraz says. “But I didn’t know how much of that is actually affected by the choices we’re making way upstream—when we go the grocery store, when we cook a meal and what we end up putting in our bodies.”

Once it enters the environment, the nitrogen in urea can trigger a spectrum of ecological impacts known as the “nitrogen cascade.” Under certain chemical conditions, and in the presence of particular microbes, urea can break down to form gases of oxidized nitrogen. These gases reach the atmosphere, where nitrous oxide (N2O) can contribute to warming via the greenhouse effect and nitrogen oxides (NOx) can cause acid rain.

Other times, algae and cyanobacteria, photosynthetic bacteria also called blue-green algae, feed on urea directly. The nitrogen helps them grow much faster than they would normally, clogging vital water supplies with blooms that can produce toxins that are harmful to humans, other animals and plants. And when the algae eventually die, the problem is not over. Microorganisms that feast on dead algae use up oxygen in the water, leading to “dead zones,” where many aquatic species simply cannot survive, in rivers, lakes and oceans. Blooms from Puget Sound to Tampa, Fla., have caused large fish die-offs.

Although it is possible to treat algal blooms, many of the current methods—such as spraying clay particles or chemicals over the surface of a bloom to kill and sink the algae—are not always effective at eliminating all of the harmful growth. Some of these methods can even lead to additional pollution. So the best strategy for dealing with the effects of nitrogen pollution is prevention, says Patricia Glibert, an oceanographer at the University of Maryland, who was not involved with the new study.

One option for preventing nitrogen from getting into the environment is improving wastewater treatment plants. The technology exists to remove 90 percent of nitrogen from wastewater, but only 1 percent of all U.S. sewage is currently treated this way, partly because the technology is so expensive. Equipping plants in China to remove nitrogen from three quarters of the country’s urban sewage cost more than $20 billion. Almaraz and her team suggest, however, that curbing nitrogen pollution could be approached more quickly with a change in eating habits that could save billions of dollars in the long term.

Their new study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, broke down protein requirements by age (adults 50 to 70 years old need the most) for the current U.S. population and projected future populations out to 2055. By midcentury, the country’s population is expected to be larger overall and to have a greater percentage of older people. The researchers calculated the amount of nitrogen that would enter the environment if people ate today’s average American diet and if they instead reduced their protein intake to only what is nutritionally needed.

This shift in diet alone could reduce the amount of nitrogen reaching aquatic ecosystems by 12 percent today and by nearly 30 percent in the future, according to the study’s results. Such a change could also help reduce damaging nitrogen pollution while wastewater infrastructure catches up. “Many people think that we need to all switch to becoming vegetarians. Obviously, that’s not practical. That’s not something that is really ever going to happen,” Glibert says.

Rather than cutting out any foods entirely, she suggests consumers could switch to a “demitarian” diet—an approach that focuses on reducing the consumption of meat and dairy, which currently make up about two thirds of the protein eaten in the U.S. “Enjoy your steak, enjoy your burger but go modest on your meat consumption in your following meal,” she says.

“One cool area that opens up here is how human behavior can influence our environment,” Almaraz says. “I think it can be really empowering to people to understand that, ‘hey, my choices—once those add up with other people making similar choices—can actually have a positive impact.’”

Source: Eating Too Much Protein Makes Pee a Problem Pollutant in the U.S. – Scientific American

Critics by  

Protein buildup in the kidneys creates a much more acidic environment in the kidneys, causing you to have to pee all the time. Increased acid production can also cause problems in the bones and liver. Side effects start with mild dehydration but can lead to the development of kidney stones, which are intensely painful. One interesting note-researchers found that plant and dairy proteins had a much lower negative effect on renal function than nondairy animal protein (meat) did.

high-protein diet might have helped you tone up for summer or get closer to your goal weight, but could it also be contributing to your blue mood? Maybe. Especially if your protein-to-carb ratio is way off base. Carbs run the show in your brain, telling it what to do and how to do it. Carbohydrates are specifically responsible for releasing serotonin-your body’s “feel good” hormone. One study from the American Medical Association on the psychological effects of low-fat and low-carb diets found that people who adhered to a high-protein, high-fat and low-carb diet for a year experienced more anxiety, depression and other negative feelings than those on a low-fat, high-carb, moderate-protein diet.

High-protein diets are often low in fiber-especially when your main protein sources are from animal products-which can wreak havoc on your digestive system. Fiber helps move everything along through your intestines, and it can only be found in plant foods. Simply mixing up your protein intake with foods that deliver both fiber and protein, like whole grains, beans or tempeh, can make a huge impact. Also, try ramping up your fruit and vegetable intake to get way more health benefits than just getting regular again.

Think protecting your body from chronic diseases and weight gain, and keeping your gut healthy, just to name a few. High-protein diets are often praised for helping people drop a dress size or two in as short as a week-but the long-term effects aren’t as desirable. Following a high-protein diet often means eating very few carbs, which isn’t sustainable for most of us in the long run. This can lead to food cravings and less energy to get your morning workout in, and can make you regain the weight you worked so hard to lose.

Sandra Aamodt, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist who has spent years studying the brain-weight link. She told EatingWell, “Don’t do anything to lose weight you’re not willing to do forever.” This is because your brain can certainly adjust its behaviors once you lose the weight, but it needs you to continue your efforts in order to maintain it. Opting for restrictive diets-like keto-may not be your best bet for long-term health after all.

Even if you’re someone who gets those coveted eight hours of sleep every night, eating too much protein can still leave your body tired for several reasons. First, we now know that overconsumption can put a strain on your kidneys, liver and bones-causing them to work overtime. Also, eating too few carbs can really affect our brains-preventing us from being sharp, focused and energized each day.

Since carbs are your brain’s main source of energy, you probably want to increase your intake of healthy ones, like whole grains, fruits and vegetables, to get you back to your best. Not only can this help you get your energy back, but you’ll be getting more of the vitamins, minerals and fiber that your body needs to be healthy and happy overall.

If you or someone you know has tried the keto diet, you’ve likely head of the term “keto breath.” This happens when you’re focused more on consuming protein and fat instead of healthy carbs: your body has to adjust and produces ketones that smell awful, like acetone (yes, the ingredient in nail polish remover!).

Trying to find a more balanced approach when it comes to macronutrient consumption will help your body get up and running on carbs again and get your breath nice and fresh once more. Simply swapping out several sources of animal protein for plant versions-like whole grains and beans-each week will still keep your protein intake at the high end of your daily needs, while increasing your intake of healthy carbs.

Related contents:

Defra opens £12.5m competition for sustainable farm-based proteins Agriland

18:02Plastics Pollution Biology Nature

More Remote Working Apps:

https://quintexcapital.com/?ref=arminham     Quintex Capital

https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/2535466   Genesis Mining

 http://www.bevtraders.com/?ref=arminham   BevTraders

https://www.litefinance.com/?uid=929237543  LiteTrading

https://alpariforex.org/fa/registration/?cpa_partner_id=13687690   Alpari Forex Trading

https://dealcheck.io?fp_ref=armin16   Dealcheck Real Estate Evaluator

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/369164  prime stocks

 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/373449  forrk   

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/194909  keysearch  

 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/296191  gluten free   

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/286851  diet fitness diabetes  

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/213027  writing job  

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/108695  postradamus

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/372094  stoodaio

 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/358049  profile mate  

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/279944  senuke  

 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/54245   asin   

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370227  appimize

 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524  super backdrop

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/302715  audiencetoolkit

 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/375487  4brandcommercial

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/375358  talkingfaces

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375706  socifeed

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/184902  gaming jobs

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/88118   backlinkindexer

 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376361  powrsuite  

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/370472  tubeserp  

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/343405  PR Rage  

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/371547  design beast  

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/376879  commission smasher

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376925  MT4Code System

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375959  viral dash

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376527  coursova

 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/144349  fanpage

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376877  forex expert  

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374258  appointomatic

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377003  woocommerce

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377005  domainname

 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376842  maxslides

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376381  ada leadz

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/333637  eyeslick

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376986  creaitecontentcreator

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/376095  vidcentric

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/374965  studioninja

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374934  marketingblocks

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/372682  clipsreel  

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/372916  VideoEnginePro

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/144577  BarclaysForexExpert

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370806  Clientfinda

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/375550  Talkingfaces

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/370769  IMSyndicator

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/283867  SqribbleEbook

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524  superbackdrop

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376849  VirtualReel

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/369837  MarketPresso

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/342854  voiceBuddy

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377211  tubeTargeter

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377557  InstantWebsiteBundle

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/368736  soronity

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/337292  DFY Suite 3.0 Agency+ information

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/291061  VideoRobot Enterprise

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/327447  Klippyo Kreators

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/324615  ChatterPal Commercial

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/299907  WP GDPR Fix Elite Unltd Sites

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/328172  EngagerMate

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/342585  VidSnatcher Commercial

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/292919  myMailIt

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/320972  Storymate Luxury Edition

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/320466  iTraffic X – Platinum Edition

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/330783  Content Gorilla One-time

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/301402  Push Button Traffic 3.0 – Brand New

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/321987  SociCake Commercial

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/289944  The Internet Marketing

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/297271  Designa Suite License

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/310335  XFUNNELS FE Commercial 

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/291955  ShopABot

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/312692  Inboxr

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/343635  MediaCloudPro 2.0 – Agency

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/353558  MyTrafficJacker 2.0 Pro+

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/365061  AIWA Commercial

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/357201  Toon Video Maker Premium

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/351754  Steven Alvey’s Signature Series

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/344541  Fade To Black

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/290487  Adsense Machine

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/315596  Diddly Pay’s DLCM DFY Club

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/355249  CourseReel Professional

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/309649  SociJam System

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/263380  360Apps Certification

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/359468  LocalAgencyBox

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377557  Instant Website Bundle                                        

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377194  GMB Magic Content

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376962  PlayerNeos VR

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381812/  BrandElevate Bundle information

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381807/ BrandElevate Ultimate

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381556/ WowBackgraounds Plus

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381689/  Your3DPal Ultimate

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380877/  BigAudio Club Fast Pass

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/379998/ Podcast Masterclass

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/366537/  VideoGameSuite Exclusive

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381148/ AffiliateMatic

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381179  YTSuite Advanced

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381749/  Xinemax 2.0 Commercial

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/382455  Living An Intentional Life

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381812  BrandElevate Bundle

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381935 Ezy MultiStores

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381194/  DFY Suite 4.0 Agency

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381761  ReVideo

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381976/  AppOwls Bundle

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381950/  TrafficForU

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381615/  WOW Backgrounds 2.0

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381560   ALL-in-One HD Stock Bundle

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/382326/   Viddeyo Bundle

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381617/  The Forex Joustar

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383751/ ADA Web Accessibility Compliance 

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383942/  10 Bold Actions In Positive Life & Work

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383706/  Adtivate Agency

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/384099/   My Passive Income Blueprints

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/329145/  Content Tool Kit

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/382663/    ReviewReel

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383865/     QR Verse Bundle

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/379307/    VIADZ Ad Template

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383051/    EngageYard Ad Creator

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381011/   Videevolve

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383751/  Local Leader Bundle

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/383119/   Tonai Voice Content

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383848/   Vocalic Commercial

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/383483/  Dropshiply Store Creator

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/384025/  Levidio Royal Podcasting

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383094/  Develop Self Empowerment

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379223/   Hostley Domain Creator

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/383447/   Mech Forex Robot

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/383177/   Motion Kingdom Studio

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/144577/   Forex Blizz Trading

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/382851/  AdRaven

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/383307/   Animaxime V2

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/375692/  Promovidz Promotion Videos

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381148/  AffiliateMatic

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/379051/  CanvaKitz Business Templates

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/383113/  Agencyscale Business Agency

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/347847/  Pitchdeck Professional Presentations

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381179/   YTSuite YouTube Ads Campaigns

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/382455/     Living an International Life

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/188236/    Galactic Dimension backgrounds

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381749/    Xinemax Hollywood Creator

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381194/   DFY Suite 4.0 Agency

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381231/    Appowls Mobile Apps

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381935/   Ezy Multi Stores

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381950/  TrafficForU

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381556/  WOW Backgrounds

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381685/   Your 3DPal

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/381617/   Forex Joustar

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381129/   Ultrafunnels A.I

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/128215/   DUX Forex Signals

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381003/   Trendio Keyword Content

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381439/  FX Goldminer

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380937/  Linkomatic

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/378775/  Pixal 2.022

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379983/   VidVoicer

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/380087/   Big Audio Club

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/379995/  Podcast Advantage

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/380159/  Reputor

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/379863/  TubePal

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/380543/  Local Sites

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/369500/   PodKastr Commercial

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/351606/ Insta Keyword

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376325/   Facedrip

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/374505/  7 Minutes Kit

 

This Is Where We’re Most at Risk From Toxic Microplastics

Australians are eating and inhaling significant numbers of tiny plastics at home, our new research shows. These “microplastics”, which are derived from petrochemicals extracted from oil and gas products, are settling in dust around the house. Some of these particles are toxic to humans — they can carry carcinogenic or mutagenic chemicals, meaning they potentially cause cancer and/or damage our DNA.

We still don’t know the true impact of these microplastics on human health. But the good news is, having hard floors, using more natural fibres in clothing, furnishings and homewares, along with vacuuming at least weekly can reduce your exposure.

What are microplastics?

Microplastics are plastic particles less than five millimetres across. They come from a range of household and everyday items such as the clothes we wear, home furnishings, and food and beverage packaging. We know microplastics are pervasive outdoors, reaching remote and inaccessible locations such as the Arctic, the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest ocean trench), and the Italian Alps. Our study demonstrates it’s an inescapable reality that we’re living in a sea of microplastics — they’re in our food and drinks, our oceans, and our homes.

What we did and what we found

While research has focused mainly on microplastics in the natural environment, a handful of studies have looked at how much we’re exposed to indoors. People spend up to 90% of their time indoors and therefore the greatest risk of exposure to microplastics is in the home. Our study is the first to examine how much microplastic we’re exposed to in Australian homes. We analysed dust deposited from indoor air in 32 homes across Sydney over a one-month period in 2019.

We asked members of the public to collect dust in specially prepared glass dishes, which we then analysed. We found 39% of the deposited dust particles were microplastics; 42% were natural fibres such as cotton, hair and wool; and 18% were transformed natural-based fibres such as viscose and cellophane. The remaining 1% were film and fragments consisting of various materials. Between 22 and 6,169 microfibres were deposited as dust per square metre, each day.

Homes with carpet as the main floor covering had nearly double the number of petrochemical-based fibres (including polyethylene, polyamide and polyacrylic) than homes without carpeted floors. Conversely, polyvinyl fibres (synthetic fibres made of vinyl chloride) were two times more prevalent in homes without carpet. This is because the coating applied to hard flooring degrades over time, producing polyvinyl fibres in house dust.

Microplastics can be ingested by various animals, ranging in size from tiny creatures like zooplankton to sharks and whales. The likelihood of microplastics being eaten is influenced by the amount in the environment and how closely they resemble food. Laboratory studies indicate that microplastics can potentially transfer through the food web when marine, terrestrial and freshwater species that have previously ingested microplastics are preyed on by other animals.

Microplastics eaten by larger marine animals will generally pass through their bodies. However, research does show that microplastics can be retained in the gut for extended periods where they may cause abrasion and damage to internal tissues. Nanoplastics can pass through the gut wall and travel to different parts of the body, such as the lungs and liver, where they can cause damage. Further research is required to understand the potential health implications from ingesting microplastics.

Microplastics can be toxic

Microplastics can carry a range of contaminants such as trace metals and some potentially harmful organic chemicals. These chemicals can leach from the plastic surface once in the body, increasing the potential for toxic effects. Microplastics can have carcinogenic properties, meaning they potentially cause cancer. They can also be mutagenic, meaning they can damage DNA.

However, even though some of the microplastics measured in our study are composed of potentially carcinogenic and/or mutagenic compounds, the actual risk to human health is unclear. Given the pervasiveness of microplastics not only in homes but in food and beverages, the crucial next step in this research area is to establish what, if any, are safe levels of exposure.

How much are we exposed to? And can this be minimised?

Roughly a quarter of all of the fibres we recorded were less than 250 micrometres in size, meaning they can be inhaled. This means we can be internally exposed to these microplastics and any contaminants attached to them.

Using human exposure models, we calculated that inhalation and ingestion rates were greatest in children under six years old. This is due to their lower relative body weight, smaller size, and higher breathing rate than adults. What’s more, young children typically have more contact with the floor, and tend to put their hands in their mouths more often than adults.

What is the World Economic Forum doing about plastic pollution?

More than 90% of plastic is never recycled, and a whopping 8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans annually. At this rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050. The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) is a collaboration between businesses, international donors, national and local governments, community groups and world-class experts seeking meaningful actions to beat plastic pollution.

In Ghana, for example, GPAP is working with technology giant SAP to create a group of more than 2,000 waste pickers and measuring the quantities and types of plastic that they collect. This data is then analysed alongside the prices that are paid throughout the value chain by buyers in Ghana and internationally. It aims to show how businesses, communities and governments can redesign the global “take-make-dispose” economy as a circular one in which products and materials are redesigned, recovered and reused to reduce environmental impacts.

Children under six inhale around three times more microplastics than the average — 18,000 fibres, or 0.3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per year. They would also ingest on average 6.1 milligrams of microplastics in dust per kg of body weight per year. For a five-year-old, this would be equivalent to eating a garden pea’s worth of microplastics over the course of a year. But for many of these plastics there is no established safe level of exposure. Our study indicated there are effective ways to minimise exposure.

First is the choice of flooring, with hard surfaces, including polished wood floors, likely to have fewer microplastics than carpeted floors. Also, how often you clean makes a difference. Vacuuming floors at least weekly was associated with less microplastics in dust than those that were less frequently cleaned. So get cleaning! Some pollutants and heavy metals can also adsorb or stick to plastic surfaces. As a result, plastics can act like sponges in the environment, passively collecting chemicals onto their surfaces.

While plastics can remove some persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from the surrounding water, there is concern about what happens when plastics containing these adsorbed pollutants are ingested by animals. The ability of some POPs to bind to plastics is particularly concerning due to their toxicity at low doses. These toxic and persistent chemicals are widely distributed in the marine environment and are readily concentrated onto plastic surfaces at up to 1 million times the concentration than in the surrounding water.

Studies have shown that these chemicals can transfer from ingested plastics to animal tissue where they can become concentrated within the animal and transfer through the food chain. Plastics are beneficial to human health through their use in medical applications and for protecting our food and beverages. Plastics have revolutionized healthcare through improving sterility by the use of disposable syringes, gloves, IV tubes and catheters and providing increased comfort with hypoallergenic medical devices, heart valves, and flexible prosthetics (artificial body parts).

Plastic bottles and containers provide a way of distributing water that is safe to drink in locations where there are major issues of water contamination. Plastic packaging limits food and beverage spoilage through microbial contamination. It is likely that we are ingesting some level of plastics in our diet. A rapidly growing body of research is showing that ongoing accumulation of toxins associated with plastics poses a risk to our food safety and public health. However, the levels of plastics and associated chemicals we are exposed to in our diet compared with other everyday activities has not been assessed.

Source: This is where we’re most at risk from toxic microplastics | World Economic Forum

More contents:

Microplastic Ingestion by Zooplankton”

Where Does Marine Litter Come From?”

Chemical mapping of tire and road wear particles for single particle analysis”.

“Plastic free July: How to stop accidentally consuming plastic particles from packaging”

Development solutions: Building a better

“Proceedings of the International Research Workshop on the Occurrence, Effects and Fate of Microplastic Marine Debris”

Annual variation in neustonic micro- and meso-plastic particles and zooplankton in the Bay of Calvi (Mediterranean–Corsica)”

Restricting the use of intentionally added microplastic particles to consumer or professional use products of any kind”.

Microplastics have spread right to the sea bed, study finds 

90% of table salt is contaminated with microplastics, according to a new report

The water where baby fish are outnumbered 7 to 1 by plastic

More Remote Working Apps:

https://quintexcapital.com/?ref=arminham     Quintex Capital

https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/2535466   Genesis Mining

 http://www.bevtraders.com/?ref=arminham   BevTraders

https://www.litefinance.com/?uid=929237543  LiteTrading

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/369164  prime stocks

  https://jvz3.com/c/202927/361015  content gorilla

  https://jvz8.com/c/202927/366443  stock rush  

 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/373449  forrk   

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/194909  keysearch  

 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/296191  gluten free   

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/286851  diet fitness diabetes  

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/213027  writing job  

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/108695  postradamus

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/372094  stoodaio

 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/358049  profile mate  

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/279944  senuke  

 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/54245   asin   

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370227  appimize

 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524  super backdrop

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/302715  audiencetoolkit

 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/375487  4brandcommercial

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/375358  talkingfaces

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375706  socifeed

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/184902  gaming jobs

 https://jvz6.com/c/202927/88118   backlinkindexer

 https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376361  powrsuite  

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/370472  tubeserp  

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/343405  PR Rage  

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/371547  design beast  

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/376879  commission smasher

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376925  MT4Code System

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/375959  viral dash

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376527  coursova

 https://jvz4.com/c/202927/144349  fanpage

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376877  forex expert  

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374258  appointomatic

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377003  woocommerce

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377005  domainname

 https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376842  maxslides

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376381  ada leadz

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/333637  eyeslick

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/376986  creaitecontentcreator

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/376095  vidcentric

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/374965  studioninja

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/374934  marketingblocks

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/372682  clipsreel  

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/372916  VideoEnginePro

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/144577  BarclaysForexExpert

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/370806  Clientfinda

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/375550  Talkingfaces

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/370769  IMSyndicator

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/283867  SqribbleEbook

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376524  superbackdrop

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/376849  VirtualReel

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/369837  MarketPresso

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/342854  voiceBuddy

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377211  tubeTargeter

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/377557  InstantWebsiteBundle

https://jvz6.com/c/202927/368736  soronity

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/337292  DFY Suite 3.0 Agency+ information

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/291061  VideoRobot Enterprise

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/327447  Klippyo Kreators

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/324615  ChatterPal Commercial

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/299907  WP GDPR Fix Elite Unltd Sites

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/328172  EngagerMate

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/342585  VidSnatcher Commercial

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/292919  myMailIt

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/320972  Storymate Luxury Edition

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/320466  iTraffic X – Platinum Edition

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/330783  Content Gorilla One-time

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/301402  Push Button Traffic 3.0 – Brand New

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/321987  SociCake Commercial

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/289944  The Internet Marketing

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/297271  Designa Suite License

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/310335  XFUNNELS FE Commercial 

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/291955  ShopABot

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/312692  Inboxr

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/343635  MediaCloudPro 2.0 – Agency

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/353558  MyTrafficJacker 2.0 Pro+

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/365061  AIWA Commercial

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/357201  Toon Video Maker Premium

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/351754  Steven Alvey’s Signature Series

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/344541  Fade To Black

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/290487  Adsense Machine

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/315596  Diddly Pay’s DLCM DFY Club

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/355249  CourseReel Professional

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/309649  SociJam System

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/263380  360Apps Certification

 https://jvz2.com/c/202927/359468  LocalAgencyBox

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377557  Instant Website Bundle

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/377194  GMB Magic Content

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/376962  PlayerNeos VR

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381812/  BrandElevate Bundle information

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381807/ BrandElevate Ultimate

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381556/ WowBackgraounds Plus

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381689/  Your3DPal Ultimate

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/380877/  BigAudio Club Fast Pass

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/379998/ Podcast Masterclass

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/366537/  VideoGameSuite Exclusive

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381148/ AffiliateMatic

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381179  YTSuite Advanced

https://jvz1.com/c/202927/381749/  Xinemax 2.0 Commercial

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/382455  Living An Intentional Life

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381812  BrandElevate Bundle

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381935 Ezy MultiStores

https://jvz2.com/c/202927/381194/  DFY Suite 4.0 Agency

https://jvzoo.com/c/202927/381761  ReVideo

https://jvz4.com/c/202927/381976/  AppOwls Bundle

https://jvz8.com/c/202927/381950/  TrafficForU

https://jvz3.com/c/202927/381615/  WOW Backgrounds 2.0

Can Germany Show Us How to Leave Coal Behind?

In late September, just before the German parliamentary elections, the Alternative für Deutschland held a large campaign rally in Görlitz, a picturesque city of about fifty-six thousand people across the Neisse River from Poland. I was making my way down a narrow street toward the rally when I entered a square that had been dressed up as Berlin circa 1930, complete with wooden carts, street urchins, and a large poster of Hitler.

Görlitz, which was barely damaged in the Second World War, often stands in for prewar Europe in movies and TV shows. (“Babylon Berlin,” “Inglourious Basterds,” and other productions have filmed scenes there.) It was a startling sight nonetheless, especially since, a few hundred yards away, a crowd was gathering for the AfD, the far-right party whose incendiary rhetoric about foreign migrants invading Germany has raised alarms in a country vigilant about the resurgence of the radical right.

In fact, at the rally, the rhetoric about foreigners from the AfD’s top national candidate, Tino Chrupalla, was relatively mild. Germany’s general success with handling the wave of more than a million refugees and migrants who arrived in the country starting in 2015 has helped undermine the Party’s central platform.

Chrupalla moved on from migrants to other topics: the threat of coronavirus-vaccination mandates for schoolchildren, the plight of small businesses, and the country’s desire to stop burning coal, which provides more than a quarter of its electricity, a greater share even than in the United States.

Coal has particular resonance in the area around Görlitz, one of the country’s two large remaining mining regions. Germany’s coal-exit plan, which was passed in 2020, includes billions of euros in compensation for the coal regions, to help transform their economies, but there are reports that some of the money has been allocated to frivolous-sounding projects far from the towns most dependent on mining.

Chrupalla, who is from the area, listed some of these in a mocking tone and told the crowd that the region was being betrayed by the government, just as it had been after German reunification, when millions in the former East Germany lost their jobs, leading many to abandon home for the West. “We are being deceived again, like after 1990,” he said.

Such language was eerily familiar. For years, I had been reporting on American coal country, where the industry’s decades-long decline has spurred economic hardship and political resentment. In West Virginia, fewer than fifteen thousand people now work in coal mining, down from more than a hundred thousand in the nineteen-fifties.

The state is the only one that has fewer residents than it did seventy years ago, when the U.S. had a population less than half its current size—a statistic that is unlikely to surprise anyone who has visited half-abandoned towns such as Logan, Oceana, and Pineville.

Accompanying the decline has been a dramatic political shift: a longtime Democratic stronghold, West Virginia was one of only ten states to vote for Michael Dukakis, in 1988; in 2020, it provided Donald Trump with his second-largest margin of victory, after Wyoming, which also happens to be the country’s largest coal producer, ahead of West Virginia.

The statistics are strikingly similar in Lusatia, the coal-mining region that stretches north of Görlitz along the Polish border, straddling the states of Brandenburg and Saxony, about ninety miles southeast of Berlin. Since 1990, employment at coal mines and power plants has plunged from eighty thousand to less than eight thousand, and the region’s population has fallen sharply, too.

Hoyerswerda, in the heart of the area, has lost more than half of its seventy thousand inhabitants, leaving a constellation of vacant Eastern Bloc high-rises; Cottbus, the region’s largest city, has dropped from roughly a hundred and thirty thousand people, just before the Berlin Wall fell, to less than a hundred thousand. And the rightward shift visible in West Virginia has happened here, too: along with the rest of eastern Saxony, Lusatia is the AfD’s stronghold, with the Party capturing more than a third of the vote in some towns.

But there’s one crucial difference between the two places. As part of its Energiewende, or energy pivot, Germany has embarked on a formal effort to exit coal, with a national commission and subsequent legislation setting specific closure deadlines for mines and plants, and distributing billions of euros in compensation to coal companies, workers, and the regions themselves. In the U.S., the coal exit has been haphazard.

Federal attempts to move beyond coal went dormant under President Donald Trump, and under President Joe Biden they are now running up against the opposition of Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who holds both the crucial fiftieth vote in the Senate and a stake in a family coal business that earned him nearly five hundred thousand dollars in 2020.

To the extent that the country has reduced its coal usage, it has been driven mostly by the profusion of cheap natural gas. The effort to provide solutions to the social and economic fallout for coal regions has been limited to fledgling projects, such as a working group that Biden convened last year to identify communities in need and funding opportunities for them to pursue.

This contrast was what brought me to Lusatia. The German coal exit has assumed outsized symbolic importance in a world that desperately needs to reduce carbon emissions: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that we need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2050 in order to have any hope of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Burning coal for electricity represented nearly a third of all energy-related carbon emissions—the world’s single largest source—in 2018, and the International Energy Agency believes that global consumption of coal power reached record levels last year. In the absence of leadership from the U.S., Germany is seeking to show how a major manufacturing power can reduce its reliance on coal without causing too much economic damage or political backlash. A lot is riding on whether the country can pull it off.

“God created Lusatia, and the Devil buried brown coal underneath it.” This saying is credited to the Sorbs, the ethnic Slavic people who have lived in the region—die Lausitz—since the sixth century. The land was swampy, and the area remained relatively impoverished, with the exception of the cities at its southern end, Görlitz and Bautzen, which flourished as market hubs on one of Central Europe’s primary east-west trade routes.

Everything changed after the discovery of the brown coal, in the late eighteenth century. Brown coal, or lignite, is sedimentary rock that is less compressed than typical bituminous coal. Lignite is softer, closer to peat in carbon’s geological arc. It’s also even dirtier to burn than bituminous coal, and emits even more carbon.

Because lignite sits closer to the surface than bituminous coal, workers don’t need to dig deep shafts and tunnels. Instead, they use the open-cast method, excavating the clay and sand that lie above the lignite seam. This is safer than sending workers deep underground.

But it requires removing everything that stands in the way, and in densely settled Central Europe that means demolishing villages—Braunkohle mining has led to the destruction of hundreds of communities in Germany. Once the mines are exhausted, they are either flooded to become lakes or levelled off with fill, which often leaves the land unusable for farming and in some cases even too unstable to walk on. “No entry” signs dot the local woods.

Open-cast mining started in Lusatia around 1900, and, in the decades that followed, the villages targeted for destruction tended to be Sorbian. The new industry brought a wave of workers to the area, mostly ethnic Germans, and a prosperity that it hadn’t known before. Lusatia produced coal briquettes that warmed homes, and the fuel that lit the streets of Berlin and powered factories in Chemnitz and Dresden. The German word for miner has a noble connotation: Bergmann—literally, “mountain man.”

Brown coal is found in western Germany, too, near Cologne. But there it was long overshadowed by the much larger sprawl of bituminous mines in the Ruhr region, just to the north. These mines transformed the area into Germany’s great industrial powerhouse, a vast urban agglomeration home to Essen, Dortmund, and other manufacturing cities.

Germany’s coal riches were integral to the new nation’s rise in the late nineteenth century, to the war machine that sustained it through two horrific conflicts, and to West Germany’s rebound in the nineteen-fifties, after which the region’s bituminous mining became less competitive with imported coal. In 2018, mining of bituminous coal in Germany was shut down for good.

In the coal regions of the former East Germany—Lusatia and a second region, near Leipzig, which has seen employment decline even more precipitously—the cultural and economic hold of coal persists. Braunkohle was the German Democratic Republic’s only major energy resource—it had almost no oil or bituminous coal—so the country opened several dozen open-cast mines in the postwar decades, destroying many more villages in the process.

It built high-rise apartment towers in the larger towns to relocate people from the destroyed villages and to house mine workers. It gave these workers preferential pension payments and exalted them as paragons of the “workers’ and farmers’ state,” as the country’s leaders called the G.D.R. “Being a miner meant something,” a retired excavator operator, Monika Miertsch, told me.

A former electrical engineer in Cottbus recalled that, when he was a child in the G.D.R., his teachers endlessly told students that their small nation produced more brown coal than any other country in the world. Christian Hoffmann, a naturalist who grew up in Weisswasser, in Lusatia, said that people would snap to attention whenever a band started playing the coal-miner anthem, “Steigerlied.”

The industry permeated local life. The soccer team in Cottbus is named Energie. Regional artists put Braunkohle mines on canvas—a museum in Cottbus recently held a retrospective of the work. One of East Germany’s best-known singer-songwriters, its Bob Dylan, was an excavator operator from Hoyerswerda named Gerhard Gundermann, who kept working in the giant pits even as his musical career blossomed.

After my first visits to Lusatia, which is now home to slightly more than a million people, the dominance of Braunkohle started to seem overwhelming. It was as if everyone was working for the industry or had lost his or her family’s village to it, or both—which helped explain why some residents weren’t too upset about the latter. It made for an especially stark manifestation of the trade-off between the coal-based development of the modern world and the environmental costs that came with it.

“They knew that it gave work. They accepted it,” Hannelore Wodtke, a member of the town council in Welzow, said when we met. We were in Proschim, a village that she helped save from a planned expansion of the Welzow-Süd mine, two years ago. “Through coal, people did earn well. And that’s why it looks pretty good around here.”

One Saturday, I accompanied a group into the Welzow-Süd mine, on a tour offered by the owner of all the Lusatian mines, a Czech-controlled company called LEAG. We started at an outlook above the mine, a vast barren moonscape stretching to the horizon, four miles across, and then a bus took us down a long winding dirt road, pausing to let us admire giant excavators—more than six hundred feet long, among the largest machines in the world—that would resume work on Monday morning.

At last, we arrived at a seam of brown coal, about three hundred feet underground. A guide handed out plastic bags and encouraged us to pick up chunks as souvenirs. Some pieces were so soft or ragged that they resembled old wood or caked mud. It was hard to believe that this rudimentary stuff was still powering one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

I recalled a similar moment, years earlier, when I was far belowground, in a mine in southern Illinois, watching workers shear bituminous coal off a seam at the end of a three-and-a-half-mile tunnel. It had seemed unbelievably archaic at the time—men tossed hunks of black rock onto a conveyor belt so that we could power our laptops and cell phones.

The giant hole in Lusatia seemed even more unfathomable: machines had destroyed villages, and then larger machines had dug into the fossilized past for three-hundred-million-year-old carbon with which to fuel yet other machines, our daily life.

“Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit,” George Orwell wrote in “The Road to Wigan Pier,” his 1937 account from the North of England. “Down there where coal is dug it is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without ever hearing about.

Probably a majority of people would even prefer not to hear about it. Yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above. . . . Their lamp-lit world down there is as necessary to the daylight world above as the root is to the flower.”

That quality of not wanting to hear about the mining of coal, the reluctance of those in far-removed cities to make the connection between their world and that other one, provoked much of the resentment in the producing regions of the U.S.

“This country benefitted from having the cheapest electricity in the world,” Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, told me in New York in July, after a rally of current and retired miners on behalf of striking Warrior Met Coal workers, in Alabama. “So what are we going to do with these communities?”

I heard a similar sentiment from miners in Germany. “If we really shut down now, then Berlin will have no more electricity,” Toralf Smith, a leading representative for power-plant workers in Lusatia, told me. “And I’d like to see how it goes at the universities in Berlin when the toilets don’t function and the cell phones don’t function and the Internet doesn’t function.

When their lives don’t function. It’s a lack of respect. If we have to switch things over for the sake of climate politics, we won’t stand against that, but it can’t be done on our backs. It has to be done with us.”

In 2019, the sociologist Klaus Dörre, of the University of Jena, and a team of researchers interviewed dozens of coal workers in Lusatia about the region’s transition away from the industry. They found that workers keenly felt the loss of Anerkennung—recognition or esteem—that they and their forebears had enjoyed in East Germany.

The workers cited opprobrium like that from a Green Party state legislator in western Germany who tweeted a protest poster that read “Whether Nazis or coal, brown is always shit.” One worker told the researchers, “In [East German] times, we were the heroes of the nation—that’s what they always said. And now we’re the fools or evildoers of the nation, because we have to let ourselves be scolded as Nazis or murderers or polluters and I don’t know what else. And that hurts.”

When I visited Dörre in his office in Jena, he said that the overriding theme from the interviews was the lingering trauma of the economic dislocation after the collapse of the Wall, a period known as die Wende. “The story that was told to us was ‘We’re the survivors, from eighty thousand down to eight thousand. Now you’re all coming and want to give us a second Wende.’ ”

But his team also found that the workers were not necessarily all gravitating to the AfD as a result of their anger and anxiety. Organized labor still has a strong hold on the German coal industry, unlike in the U.S.; the national coal workers’ union is allied with the center-left Social Democratic Party, and has managed to keep many members from straying right.

Union leaders, as Dörre wrote in a report summarizing his research, hope that the region as a whole can also be kept from straying too much further right: “If you can manage to show that positive development is possible for the region, despite the coal exit, that would cut the ground out from under the AfD.”

In 2020, China built more than three times more new capacity for generating power from coal than the rest of the world combined. Last year, despite recurring pledges to start corralling carbon emissions, the country produced a record four billion tons of coal, up nearly five per cent from the year before.

Defenders of coal in Germany like to point to figures like this, along with the fact that Germany’s greenhouse-gas emissions constitute a mere two per cent of the global total. Why should Germany be putting its economy at risk for such relatively slight gains?

Such arguments have stood little chance against Germany’s vigorous climate-activism movement. Activists and energy analysts told me that the country bears a special responsibility to reduce emissions. As a major industrial power, it produced a significant share of historical emissions; as manufacturing has shifted to Asia, the nation’s consumers are relying on goods produced elsewhere, making them partly responsible for emissions there, too; and, as a wealthy nation, Germany has the resources to demonstrate a better path.

“It makes a huge difference if well-off, industrialized Germany manages to transition away to a different system that sustains its prosperity without causing massive emissions,” Benjamin Wehrmann, a Berlin-based correspondent for Clean Energy Wire, said. “Most people in the industry agree that its signalling effect is much larger than the actual effect.”

This exceptionalism has, however, complicated the effort to leave coal. Germany has long been home to a strong anti-nuclear movement, partly as a result of its fears of being caught in the middle of a Soviet-U.S. nuclear war. In 2000, the governing coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, whose roots lay in anti-nuclear activism, agreed to phase out nuclear power.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reversed this stance in 2009, after her center-right Christian Democratic Union regained power, but in 2011, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, she announced that the country would close all seventeen of its nuclear power plants within eleven years. To replace the lost energy—nearly a quarter of the country’s load at the time—Germany would ramp up renewable energy. Thus the Energiewende accelerated.

Since then, the country has greatly expanded its wind and solar capacity. The dramatic shift toward renewables in a country of eighty-three million people helped drive down prices worldwide for wind and solar equipment, fulfilling the country’s self-conception as a market leader. (This plunge in prices came at a cost, though, as cheap Chinese solar panels put many German panel-makers out of business.)

But the expansion has slowed in recent years, owing to a combination of state-level restrictions on siting wind turbines, resistance to turbines and transmission lines among conservationists and local residents, and a reduction in subsidies for wind-power developers. In the first half of 2021, coal was back to providing more of the country’s electricity than wind.

Most experts estimate that, to meet its renewable-energy goals, Germany needs to quadruple its wind production, to the point where turbines cover two per cent of the country’s landscape. And Germany is already contending with some of the highest electricity prices in the world, a source of consternation for domestic manufacturers seeking to remain globally competitive.

This was the daunting context in which the government convened its commission for the coal exit—Kohleausstieg—in June, 2018. Germany’s per-capita carbon emissions were still significantly higher than the E.U. average. Activists were demanding a fast response—hundreds of them had, since 2012, occupied Hambach Forest, a patch of woods in western Germany that was threatened by the expansion of a brown-coal mine.

But the country needed to time the exit so that it could be assured of having enough power not only to replace both coal and nuclear energy but to add capacity, in order to handle the coming transition to electric-powered vehicles. (Tesla recently built a manufacturing plant outside Berlin.)

The thirty-one-member Commission on Growth, Structural Change, and Employment consisted of environmentalists and scientists, industry representatives and trade unionists, and residents and elected officials from the coal regions. It met regularly in Berlin and visited some coal towns. In January, 2019, after its final meeting, which ran until almost 5 A.M., it voted nearly unanimously in favor of a plan to exit coal by 2038.

In July, 2020, the Bundestag passed a law with closure dates for various mines and power plants, and specific sums for compensation: 4.4 billion euros for the power companies, five billion euros for older workers to retire a few years early (separate funds would cover younger workers while they looked for new jobs), and, most important, forty billion euros for the mining regions, to help them with their economic transformation, a process known as the Strukturwandel.

It was a remarkable achievement, an example of postwar Germany’s consensus politics. “At a fundamental level, that all these different branches of society were able to come together around a coal exit is very significant,” Ingrid Nestle, a Green member of the Bundestag, told me. Climate-change experts in the U.S. looked on with admiration.

“They got the environmental community, labor community, and business community together to hash it out,” Jeremy Richardson, an energy analyst and a West Virginia native formerly with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told me. “You have to get people together, and you have to invest.”

But it did not take long for the good feelings to fade. Environmental groups and Green Party leaders began arguing that the country needed to move up the exit date if it wanted to meet the European Union’s new, more ambitious goal of cutting emissions by fifty-five per cent from 1990 levels by 2030. In April, 2021, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s existing climate efforts did not go far enough to stave off disaster.

And, in July, heavy rains caused devastating flooding in western Germany, near Belgium. The floods killed at least a hundred and eighty people and destroyed entire towns, drawing greater attention to the possible effects of climate change.

As the election to replace Merkel got under way during the summer, climate change was central. Having sat through countless American Presidential TV debates where the subject was barely mentioned—and where politicians couldn’t even agree on whether climate change is real—I was astonished to see it take up twenty minutes in each of the three German debates that I watched, and to see the candidates toss around Klimaneutralität and Kohleausstieg as if they were household terms.

The Social Democrats’ candidate for Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, agreed with his Green rival, Annalena Baerbock, on the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions. On Election Day, September 26th, the Social Democrats won more votes than Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, putting them in a position to form a government with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats.

The AfD saw its nationwide numbers sag, but, in the coal towns of Lusatia and the nearby regions of eastern Saxony, the Party did even better than it had four years earlier.

I encountered an AfD voter at a wind-turbine factory in Lauchhammer, on the western edge of Lusatia. The Danish company Vestas had opened the plant in 2002, and it seemed to embody the ideals of the Energiewende: a century earlier, Lauchhammer had been home to one of the first brown-coal mines in the region, and now it was making the machinery of renewable power.

But, a week before the election, Vestas announced that it was shutting down the factory, a decision widely attributed to the slowing growth of wind power in Germany. It will lay off the plant’s four hundred and sixty employees early this year.

I arrived at the factory one weekday evening at dusk, and waited in a light rain in a parking lot. After a while, a young man emerged, headed for his car. Cornell Köllner, a genial thirty-one-year-old, had worked at the plant for five years as a mechanic, advancing to a supervisory role.

He enjoyed the work, and did not know what he would do next. The only other major employer in this part of Lusatia was B.A.S.F., the chemical company, which had a plant in nearby Schwarzheide that would soon be expanding into battery production. He could look for work outside the region, but he had recently bought a house, and he did not want to leave his family. “I’ve got to look for work here in the area,” he said.

The confounding nature of it all—shuttering a wind-turbine factory at a time when the country was supposedly ramping up renewable energy, and doing so in the region that was supposed to be targeted for extra assistance in managing the transition—had only confirmed for Köllner his preference for the AfD. “Not because of ‘Nazi,’ God forbid,” he said.

“But because AfD is proposing something completely different.” I pressed him on what, exactly, that was, what the Party would do to help Lusatia or people like him, but he stuck to generalities. “They would change things,” he said. “They would really change things.”

Reluctance to leave in search of work elsewhere was widespread in Germany. “We work where we live,” Klaus Emmerich, the chief worker representative at the Garzweiler mine, in the western region, told me. “Where we live, that is our Heimat”—the German word that expresses something stronger than just “home” or “home town.”

Again, the echo was strong from U.S. coal regions, where residents, especially younger ones, constantly wrestle with the question of whether to stay or go. “It’s just home,” John Arnett, a marine veteran who worked for a closing coal-fired plant in southern Ohio, told me, in 2018. “I’ve been a bunch of different places, different countries. I’ve been across the equator. And now this is where I want to be, or I’d have stayed somewhere else. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, these hills.”

The people who remained often took offense at the economist’s or the pundit’s counsel that the only thing to do for regions that had lost their former economic rationale was to give people a bus or plane ticket out. In the U.S., the rate of people moving across state lines has in fact dropped by half since the early nineties, a trend attributed to, among other things, the cost of living in higher-opportunity cities and the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family, which leaves people dependent on extended family for child care or elder care.

The stay-or-go question is particularly sensitive in eastern Germany, because of the flight of younger people that occurred in the years after reunification. Die Zeit estimates that 3.7 million people, a quarter of the population of the former G.D.R., eventually left. One night, at a tavern in Hoyerswerda, I talked with Jörg Müller, a fifty-six-year-old man who worked at the B.A.S.F. plant, making paint for German car companies, and who had in his youth done cleaning jobs at the mine where his father worked as an engineer.

Müller, who had brought up his children alone after his wife died young, of cancer, was worried about the impact that higher energy prices could have on B.A.S.F.’s prospects. But his main preoccupation was his grown children, who had left the area—one to study in Dresden, one to work in Kassel, in the former West Germany. I asked him how often he saw them. “Once or twice a year,” he said.

To coal’s opponents in Germany, such laments about home-town decline are undermined by the fact that the industry has been demolishing home towns for decades. The extent of the destruction is all the more striking in a culture that generally idealizes the village. Even amid all the devastation wrought by the coal industry in Appalachia—the mountaintop-removal mining, the coal-slurry spills—coal companies have not had to wipe entire towns off the map, as happens in Germany.

The week after the election, I travelled to the western brown-coal region, known as the Rhenish district, which has become the primary front for climate activists seeking to halt mining via direct action. They had succeeded in sparing Hambach Forest, and many had now moved to a new encampment, in a tiny hamlet called Lützerath that was on the verge of being claimed by the Garzweiler mine.

Part of the hamlet had already been demolished by R.W.E., the German energy company that owns all the western region’s mines and power plants, which employ about nine thousand people. The only villager still living in Lützerath was a fifty-six-year-old farmer who was fighting the company in court and had welcomed more than a hundred activists to set up camp on his property.

An R.W.E. spokesperson told me that the company “will continue to try to find an amicable solution with the landowner.” The spokesperson added that R.W.E. works closely with those affected by its plans and stands by its promises.

On October 1st, the day that the company was allowed to resume removing trees there, I cycled from the town of Erkelenz through fields of harvested sugar beets to reach Lützerath, where several dozen advocates had joined the occupiers to launch the defense. It made for a jarring juxtaposition:

There were the remaining trees around the hamlet, festooned with tree houses and anti-coal banners; a narrow strip where the advocates were arrayed to speak; and, behind them, a vast pit, with excavators churning away at the edge of it. “If Lützerath falls, then the 1.5-degree limit falls,” Pauline Brünger, an activist with the youth movement Fridays for Future, said. “It lies in our hands—1.5 degrees is nonnegotiable. Lützerath must stand.”

I wandered into the encampment, where activists were breaking down pallets to build huts and more tree houses while others held an orientation session for new arrivals. Many wore balaclavas to try to hide their identities; others wore covid masks that served the same function. When I took pictures, a young woman came over to stop me.

Suddenly, a cry went up from the entrance to the encampment: two large excavators were approaching the hamlet. A couple of dozen activists marched down the road to block them. One of the drivers climbed out, saying that he and his colleague were only doing land-reclamation work on the older portion of the mine, and were coming to park their equipment for the weekend. The activists refused to let him through. “Hey, have a lot of fun sitting!” he called out angrily as he reversed back down the road.

Soon afterward, two large pickups approached from the other direction, loaded with concrete blocks and metal fencing, and rolled into the main assemblage of protesters; they were bringing the materials for an added security perimeter, and had taken a wrong turn, right into the enemy camp.

The activists fell upon them and unloaded the blocks and fencing to build their own security perimeter, preventing access to one of the hamlet’s roads. The drivers sat helplessly in their cabs, watching the expropriation. Finally, a handful of police officers arrived and, after some cajoling, arranged for the materials to be returned and for the trucks to be allowed back out.

Nearby, five larger villages were also threatened with destruction by R.W.E. Most families had already sold their homes to the company and moved out, many of them to new developments on the outskirts of Erkelenz which had been built to house relocated families, and had even been named for the marked villages—Kuckum-Neu, Keyenberg-Neu, and so on.

Tina Dresen, twenty-one, and her family were still holding out in Kuckum, and she told me how strange it had been to grow up in the shadow of Garzweiler and to see other villages falling to the bulldozers, one by one. “On the right side of my home was the hole, and life ended there,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone who lived there, and the bus stopped driving there, and the villages were destroyed there. I lived only to the left.”

She told me that some of the vacant homes in Kuckum were being used to house families who had lost their homes to the recent flooding. The irony was overpowering: people rendered homeless by a disaster likely exacerbated by climate change were now living in homes made available by the looming displacement of the coal mining that was contributing to climate change.

That evening, I rode my bike to Kuckum and found one of the displaced families. Anja Kassenpecher had been relocated to the village with her son, four cats, and two dogs, after the flooding destroyed her beloved half-timber house in the town of Ahrweiler. “What happened in the flood catastrophe, that was nature, and one couldn’t do anything against that,” she said. “But the dismantling of the coal here, one could do something about that.”

In 1945, the victorious Russians removed a thirty-kilometre stretch of rail between Cottbus and the town of Lübbenau, to take back to the Soviet Union, one of many such claims made throughout eastern Germany. The rails were never replaced, and the single track in that stretch has meant that trains run between Cottbus and Berlin only once an hour—less than ideal by German standards. Part of the Strukturwandel’s forty billion euros will be used to replace the missing track.

But, toward the end of 2021, reports kept appearing in the local and national media of the questionable ways other portions of the fund were being put to use by federal agencies and by the obscure provincial councils that were overseeing much of the spending: a techno festival, a zoo, new streetcars in Görlitz.

Coal defenders and opponents alike told me how wrong they thought it was to spend three hundred and ten million euros on a new branch of Germany’s public-health agency in an exurb of Berlin sixty miles from Cottbus, or millions more on the renovation of a cultural center in a town thirty miles from Dresden, far from the coal towns.

In November, eleven mayors met to express their frustration with the spending decisions and to demand that communities closest to the coal mines get more of a say. “If it goes on like this, the pot will be empty,” Tristan Mühl, the mayor of the village of Krauschwitz, told me afterward. “The perspective of the community is missing.”

Part of the challenge for the appropriators was structural: under European Union rules, they were forbidden to use the money to subsidize new or existing businesses in the region. Instead, the discussion was of funding research institutes for renewable energy, including innovations in hydrogen power, that might eventually lead to job creation.

René Schuster, a Cottbus-based representative of the environmental group Grüne Liga, told me that it was doubtful whether such ventures would ever come close to replacing the jobs that would vanish in the coal exit. “I doubt you’re going to get a boom in new jobs that will replace what you’re losing from coal,” he said. “That you’re going to get seven thousand jobs, that’s not going to happen.”

But it was still wrong to think of the coal jobs as somehow sacrosanct, he added. “It’s often discussed as if coal workers have a fundamental right to their job. There’s no right to an income. You have a fundamental right to your property. Whoever gets relocated, their property rights are being encroached on. But whoever wants to live off that relocation, well, they have no fundamental right to that.”

After the election, Olaf Scholz and his counterparts in the Greens and the Free Democrats began negotiating the coal-exit terms for their coalition pact, including whether to move the 2038 date to 2030. Adding pressure was the concurrent climate summit in Glasgow, where a major focus was whether to mandate a global end to burning coal.

The talk of an earlier exit prompted more consternation in Lusatia, where many viewed it as a breach of the commission’s compromise. “By 2030, little of this will have got started,” Christine Herntier, the mayor of Spremberg, said of the Strukturwandel.

Every day or two, I checked an app called Electricity Map, which shows the sources from which countries are drawing their electricity. Invariably, coal was Germany’s largest source, with wind a distant second or third. The plan was to use natural gas as a bridge to the expansion of renewables, but that would require building more gas power plants, fast, and would also mean making Germany even more dependent on Russia, one of its biggest gas suppliers.

Recently, Russia built a controversial pipeline to Germany through the Baltic Sea, called Nord Stream 2. As a last resort, Germany could buy nuclear-based electricity from France, which has remained staunchly committed to nuclear power, or coal-fired electricity from Poland, but not without hypocrisy, given its own disavowal of both sources.

On November 24th, the coalition released its governing agreement, which called for “ideally” moving up the coal exit to 2030. The rhetorical wiggle room satisfied neither side, and reflected the bind in which the country has found itself. Germany had set out to be an example of how to relinquish the dirty-energy source that had enabled modernity.

It had developed a clear timetable, and it had agreed on significant compensation, recognizing that there was a societal obligation to people whose livelihood was being shut down as a matter of policy. The process was undoubtedly superior to what was playing out at the same time in the U.S., where the Biden Administration’s plan to spend five hundred and fifty-five billion dollars on incentives to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, as part of the sweeping Build Back Better package, was foundering, shy of majority support in the Senate.

But Germany was also at risk of being an unintended example, one that could be cited by opponents of the imposition of emissions reductions. (A recent Wall Street Journal editorial was titled “Germany’s Energy Surrender: Rarely has a country worked so hard to make itself vulnerable.”)

The exit from nuclear power was leaving the country much less space to maneuver as it tried to move away from coal. And the lack of transparency and forethought with the regional spending undermined the purpose of the compensation: to convey that, this time around, the rest of the country really did care what happened to its left-behind places.

On my final visit to Lusatia, in November, I met Lars Katzmarek, an employee at LEAG, the coal company, at a coffee shop in Cottbus. Katzmarek, who is twenty-nine, oversees telecommunications at the mines, a job he loves and hopes to keep until things shut down. He was not drifting to the AfD: he is a loyal Social Democrat, he believes in climate change, and he even met with some Fridays for Future activists in 2019.

But he understood the feeling of betrayal in the region. His parents both worked in Braunkohle. His mother lost her job in the nineties and never found steady work again. Cottbus has experienced the third-highest rate of departures to western Germany of any city in the former G.D.R., and nearly all of Katzmarek’s high-school friends have left town. It was hard now to watch a new wave of people leaving the company and the region because they didn’t believe the promises of the Strukturwandel. “The sorrow is gigantic,” he said.

Katzmarek composed rap music on the side, and he had recently produced a single about Lusatia’s plight which included clips of him singing atop one of the turbines at the Vestas plant—before the news came of its closure. “For politics to win back the trust of the people, it has to finally be the case that things are carried out the way they said they would,” he said. “This is the big chance to win back trust.”

What you couldn’t have was a coal exit that led to a decline in German industry because of higher electricity costs. “You can’t have deindustrialization in Germany,” he said. “Industry means prosperity. A loss of prosperity would be absurd. If other countries look to see how Germany has fared, and they see deindustrialization and a loss of prosperity and the people growing discontent and populism gaining a new foothold, who would follow our example?”

His nuanced tone made me wish that we had more time to talk. But he had to catch the hourly train to Berlin, to visit one of his many friends who had left Lusatia.

Source: Can Germany Show Us How to Leave Coal Behind? | The New Yorker

.

More contents:

%d bloggers like this: