As a supplement to our report, Existing U.S. Federal Authorities to Address Plastic Pollution: A Synopsis for Decision Makers, this report offers a concise review of the instruments through which the United States can negotiate and conclude international agreements. The report then describes how existing U.S.
The report, Existing U.S. Federal Authorities to Address Plastic Pollution: A Synopsis for Decision Makers, provides policymakers with a comprehensive analysis of how existing federal law may be utilized to address the plastic pollution crisis.
Land-based hydraulic fracturing has been the subject of extensive discussion and debate in recent years. But offshore hydraulic fracturing has received relatively little attention, despite having been used in practice for many years to stimulate wells where production has declined and where there are offshore shale plays. Emerging awareness of offshore hydraulic fracturing has spurred questions about the nature of the practice, how it has been employed, and the framework for managing it.
This brief summarizes Existing U.S. Federal Authorities to Address Plastic Pollution: A Synopsis for Decision Makers, a report which identifies federal authorities—spanning executive orders, legislation, regulations, and associated programs—that can be used to address plastic pollution through interventions identified across the plastic life cycle.
The report provides a comprehensive overview of the existing legal authorities the U.S. federal government can leverage to achieve the national goal of eliminating plastic release into the environment by 2040 while safeguarding human health and the environment. Building on the legal framework established by a Congressionally-mandated report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the report categorizes federal authorities—spanning executive orders, legislation, regulations, and associated programs—into specific "intervention areas" across the plastic life cycle.
The very first science was astronomy. After all, the sky is a laboratory open to everyone. It also has always been an environmental domain—people inhabit the ecosystem that embraces both the stars above and the Earth below and have long endowed both realms with important properties affecting the human condition. Mastering the two domains was important to the emergence and survival of early civilizations.
Ancient humans populated the heavens with immutable figures from their environment, such as bears, rams, bulls, whales, and more. Early civilizations identified the planets as wandering deities, finding meaning in their movements. They tracked the motions of the Sun through their versions of the zodiac. They observed the equinoxes and solstices. They found portents in comets, eclipses, and meteor showers. Civilizations in present-day China, Japan, Iran, and the Americas recorded the supernova of 1054 as full of tidings for their societies.
Humanity discovered both messages and inspiration in the realm above. In the Christian tradition, it was an astronomical event of great eminence that drew the three Wise Men to Bethlehem. And Christians, Jews, Muslims, Chinese and other societies alike still time at least some of their holidays using a lunar calendar.
With the advent of agriculture, communities needed to know when to sow seed and relied on the stars to tell them. Eventually, astronomers counseled kings and queens and potentates. They calculated eclipses and enforced the calendar. In Great Britain, there is still an Astronomer Royal, a post established in the 17th century. Today the Astronomer is paid 100 pounds a year and is considered a member of his majesty’s household. The nocturnal sky is so important to today’s society that the view of the heavens is a tourist attraction in planetariums. In that regard, the irony is that for most in the audience, the night outdoors has been all but lost.
Astronomy today is a vastly more powerful science than even a century ago, when humanity didn’t yet realize we inhabit just one galaxy of hundreds of billions, all rushing away from each other in an expanding universe. Those discoveries came from data gathered by astronomer Edwin Hubble starting in 1924, working the powerful telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California.
That great instrument and countless others throughout the world are now threatened by the pervasive light pollution that blankets much of the planet. Not only astronomy is at risk. Indeed, humanity is losing its connection to the night sky because of too much ground-based light, which reflects off atmospheric molecules to create a dim, pervasive haze that obscures all but the brightest stars. It is now all but impossible to see the Milky Way except in remote areas.
Importantly, a great deal of this light is waste—producing excess greenhouse gas emissions beyond reasonable needs for illumination. Indeed, the haze problem has worsened considerably just in the last few years, fueled in part by the lower operating cost of LED bulbs. Many buildings and facilities are illuminated all night, and citizens clamor for additional lighting to combat crime and make driving safer.
This is not just a problem for astronomers and amateur star gazers—it is a profound environmental problem that is just beginning to crest.
Many animals and plants depend on the solar cycle to orient their behavior. When night becomes day, that is a problem. Some burrowing animals avoid going out for feeding except when it’s really dark, forcing them into starvation. Many turtles use the moon to steer by when they come on land to lay their eggs. They are often confused by the lighting coming from beach houses; their spawn similarly become disoriented and end up as prey. Coral reefs bloom all at once with genetic material as a mating strategy timed to the phases of the moon—but now are often confused by onshore lighting. Many migrating birds steer by the stars, sometimes going off course because of too much light—helping to drive the plunge in avian species worldwide.
Moths, who are vital pollinators, in their brief life, time their mating to darkness; where there is too much light, pheromones change from positive to negative and romance becomes impossible. Whenever you see insects around your porch light, it is a sign that your convenience is disrupting their mating.
Scientific American explains how the loss of nighttime pollinators is important. In a 2017 experiment testing that hypothesis, scientists wearing night-vision goggles observed cabbage thistle plants. But the light haze “deterred nocturnal pollinating insects from making their rounds. . . . The plants bore less fruit, suggesting that the effects of brightening nights could eventually show up in supermarket aisles.” In the words of the magazine, “Artificial lights send the natural world a bewildering array of ill-timed signals—Wake up! Hide! Hunt! Fly this way! Change your metabolism!”
Scientists have recently calculated that the planet has lost 75 percent of its insect biomass, and researchers believe light pollution is an extinction driver for many insect species. Accompanying this loss is the vital role insects play in the planetary ecosystem, where seemingly insignificant organisms can prove essential to the health of the environment. And that is important to humanity, along with getting back the majesty of the night sky and the ability of any person to penetrate its eternal truths and mysteries by contemplation and close observation.
To view the night sky as environmental, consider the words of John Muir: “The floods of light from the stars . . . must always be wild, for man can change them and mar them hardly more than can the butterflies.” In the words of the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank: “He was wrong. Man found a way to blot out the floods of light from the stars.” According to Milbank, “Light-polluted skies cover an estimated 80 percent of the world’s population and 99 percent of the U.S. and European populations.”
Into this crisis comes a writer who some feel should rank with Rachel Carson. The book is The Darkness Manifesto (Scribner), by Johan Eklöf, a biologist from Sweden. The insect biomass decline cited earlier comes from his book, as do some of the examples above about the needs of organisms to have dark nights and clear skies. According to Eklöf, that list of organisms includes Homo sapiens.
In a review of the book, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik shows he has a way to pick anecdotes. For instance, in Britain one can rarely find bats in belfries anymore. The reason is that most churches shine bright lights on their steeples and bell towers all night, and the bats have left for somewhere darker.
Eklöf decries not just illuminated steeples but, according to Gopnik, especially “the ‘sky beam’ atop the Luxor Hotel, in Las Vegas. Creating forty-two billion candlepower [emphasis in original] of light every night, meant merely as a come-on to tourists and gamblers, it unintentionally excites and undoes flocks of birds, genetically programmed by evolution to fly toward bright light—and, in 2019, attracted clouds of grasshoppers, who flew toward the pseudo-Egyptian pyramid with all the horror of a pseudo-Egyptian plague.” That is an example of just deserts to a menace, but most light haze is caused by ignorance, carelessness, and pursuit of dark avoidance without care to the spillover effects.
The good news is that most of this excess light can be eliminated by best practices for cities and facilities. Street lights can be designed so no light shines upward, which sharply cuts operating costs to achieve the same advantages in traffic safety. Additionally, LED lights can be tuned to omit certain frequencies that cause the light haze bedeviling astronomers or that produce unwanted animal or plant responses, without inconvenience to the citizen, business, or municipality. Milbank advocates local campaigns to change over exterior lights for household crime prevention to bulbs that only turn on when they detect motion. The retrofit is painless and also provides energy savings.
According to Scientific American, astronomers at the Kitt Peak observatory formed the Dark Sky Association to combat this modern plague. The scientists succeeded in getting nearby Flagstaff, Arizona, to install new streetlamps and undertake other measures to help the telescope facility remain working. Such programs often save money for localities, businesses, and homeowners in addition to benefitting ecosystems and even avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. Sounds like an enlightened solution.
However, in a disturbing article, New Scientist reported last fall that “adverts in space are now economically viable.” The magazine notes that “companies could use constellations of satellites that reflect sunlight to Earth to create advertisements in the sky at a commercially viable cost of $65 million per mission.” The figure is the result of a feasibility study done by two experts. They claim that groups of as few as 50 satellites in low Earth orbit, each equipped with a reflector, could for a few days act as pixels to show an image. The ads would be viewable for a while after sunset for most of humanity. Imagine a corporate logo or a politician’s name. The image could be three times bigger than the full Moon.
Notice & Comment is written by the editor and represents his views.
SpaceX’s high-profile rocket explosion on April 20 has angered environmental and civil liberty groups who are furious about the level of damage caused to the local environment in Texas. The explosion created significant pollution that impacted local communities, and could threaten endangered species on Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas. . . . .
Many people immediately took to social media to jab Elon Musk, the CEO, chairman and chief technology officer of SpaceX. While the launch wasn’t considered a complete defeat by the company (nor are explosions uncommon when testing rockets), the extreme damage caused by this one could have likely been prevented with a flame diverter, a structure that fits below a rocket launchpad that channels a rocket’s extreme heat and exhaust in a controlled way. The lack of a flame diverter scorched the landscape and plant life near the rocket pad, as post-launch pictures reveal. —Salon.com
Even now, with the sea level around Boston about a foot higher than it was a century ago, major storms have caused flooding in the Green Line near Fenway Station and at Aquarium Station on the Blue Line. But as seas rise another 1.4 feet by 2050, as NOAA has projected, even a relatively mundane storm—the kind that hits every two years—could cause massive damage to the T, inundating vast portions of the system. —Boston Globe
Nightime Light Pollution Is an Environmental Disaster Unfolding.
Countries and localities around the world are taking on ocean pollution by banning single-use plastics — products typically used once and discarded, such as water bottles, grocery bags, and straws. According to Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Americans discarded about 33.6 million tons of plastic in 2014. UN Environment (UNEP) estimates that globally “only nine percent of the nine billion tons of plastic the world has ever produced has been recycled.” By 2050, UNEP estimates that 12 billion tons of plastic will have been landfilled or released into the environment. Some of that plastic, such as bags and polystyrene foam containers, can take thousands of years to decompose.
This discarded plastic causes a panoply of environmental problems. Ocean pollution is front and center — with 8 million tons of plastic blown or washed into the ocean each year, according to a 2015 article in Science. The tear-jerking images of dolphins and sea turtles suffering the consequences of ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic bags depict only part of the problem. Less obvious is the harm to coral reefs which, according to a study reported in Science earlier this year, are more vulnerable to disease when abraded by plastic. Plastic particles that contain chemicals also are routinely ingested by fish that in turn are harvested and consumed.
In a 2018 report, UNEP concludes: “government levies and bans — where properly planned and enforced — have been among the most effective strategies to limit overuse of disposable plastic products.” UNEP data tabulate the myriad forms of national-level bans on single-use plastics in countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe, and Oceania. Most recently, India’s prime minister announced a ban throughout his country on all single-use plastics by 2022.
Will the United States follow suit? To date, the government’s response has been tepid at best. Congress has not enacted any laws banning or imposing fees on single-use plastics. And, although dozens of localities ban or charge fees for plastic bags, including several major cities such as Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, so far only California and Hawaii have state-wide bans.
Several localities also have adopted measures to address additional types of single-use plastics. Malibu, Miami Beach, and Fort Myers have banned plastic straws, while Davis and San Luis Obispo require businesses to ask customers whether they want straws before providing them.
In addition, 10 states have beverage container deposit laws (or bottle bills) that charge customers a deposit on bottles that is refunded when the empties are returned. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Hawaii enacted its ban in 2002, but the majority of the laws were passed in the 1970s and 1980s. An alternative approach taken by at least six states focuses on fostering recycling. For example, NCSL reports that Delaware, Maine, and New York require in-store recycling programs for plastic bags.
The plastics industry strongly supports recycling over bans. The American Chemistry Council’s Steve Russell posits in a blog post that many “essential products” are made with plastic “because plastic does its job better than alternatives.” He contends, “While all materials impact the environment, plastics used in many consumer goods typically produce less waste, use less energy, and create fewer greenhouse gas emissions than alternatives.”
In response to industry concerns, some states have enacted legislation that prohibits localities from banning single-use plastics. The NCSL counts 10 states that have enacted preemption measures, including Michigan, Idaho, and Mississippi.
A leading nonprofit maintains, however, that bans are a useful tool. The Product Stewardship Institute’s Scott Cassel and Megan Byers emphasize that bans only apply to “non-essential convenience plastics” that can be “easily relinquished or replaced by reusable alternatives.” They surmise: “However one feels about bans as the solution to plastic pollution, one cannot ignore the existing reality: taxpayers and governments are paying the costs for litter cleanups and recycling, not the companies who profit from their manufacture.”
But PSI supports voluntary measures as well, challenging the plastics industry to assist “state and local governments in the U.S. by taking part in extended producer responsibility for packaging, designing plastic products to be safer and more recyclable, helping to expand recycling infrastructure and education, and focusing on the production of high-value products instead of problematic convenience items.”
PSI’s approach is consistent with UNEP’s spot-on assertion: “Ultimately, tackling one of the biggest environmental scourges of our time will require government to regulate, businesses to innovate and individuals to act.”
Bans of single-use plastics rise in popularity, protecting the oceans.
Every year, some 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean, entangling or choking wildlife and ending up in the guts of zooplankton and fish. This plastic never fully biodegrades but rather breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, making it nearly impossible to retrieve. If trends continue, the ocean could contain one pound of plastic for every three pounds of finfish by 2025. Early studies have shown that the chemicals leached from plastic can impact reproduction and life cycles in shellfish and cause brain damage in fish, many of which we then eat.
This is unacceptable. For 30 years, Ocean Conservancy has mobilized the International Coastal Cleanup to mitigate marine debris. More than 12 million volunteers have collected nearly 230 million pounds of trash from beaches and waterways since the 1980s. They have seen firsthand the real impact of items like plastic shopping bags, straws, water bottles, and other often-disposable items. We are proud of this mammoth initiative and are on track for 2018 to be our biggest cleanup yet.
But trying to solve the problem through cleanups alone is like mopping up an overflowing sink without turning off the tap. We need to stop plastics from getting into the ocean in the first place. A circular economy, including effective waste management, provides a long-term solution.
More than 2 billion people worldwide lack access to proper waste collection and management. An estimated 80 percent of ocean plastic comes from land, with nearly half from just five countries in Southeast Asia where consumption and waste generation have outpaced governments’ abilities to collect trash.
A circular economy can help mitigate the ocean plastic problem as well as many others. But even the best, most recyclable products and materials are still trash if they reach the ocean. Effective waste collection and recycling is critical to ensuring the loop is complete. A circular economy that improves collection, recycling, and end use of materials will let us keep valuable resources in the system and out of the ocean.
No one sector can tackle this alone. That’s why Ocean Conservancy launched the Trash Free Seas Alliance in 2012, to unite industry, scientists, and conservationists to combat marine debris. And that is why we work with governments around the world, to ensure appropriate, supportive policies are implemented.
Waste management is often led by local governments. But there are national-level policies that can help to direct and support these efforts. In 2016 ministers from the 21 economies of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum endorsed a series of policy and practice recommendations that provide guidance for establishing the political, economic, legal, and regulatory conditions to prioritize and incentivize investments in waste management by countries, multilateral development banks, and the private sector.
These recommendations encourage countries to set ambitious, attainable targets with supporting action plans. APEC countries will measure and reward progress through performance indicators, and encourage and acknowledge frontrunner cities for their achievement. End-of-life incentive policies will be used to stimulate recycling market demand and increase product recyclability. Finally, the recommendations prioritize solutions with strong environmental standards, transparent monitoring, and community engagement. Indonesia is already putting these ideas into practice: in 2016, its government set a goal to reduce marine debris in its waters by 70 percent, and its National Marine Debris Action Plan addresses several of these recommendations.
The private sector and civil society must engage as well. Companies can use their marketing power for awareness and education, to guide consumer preferences in the right direction. They can allocate funds toward collection of their products — much like the dairy industry did in the days of the milk man. They can develop ingenious ways of recycling materials. They can also use their business expertise to support new projects and entrepreneurs that will build next-generation waste management systems.
In October, Ocean Conservancy, the Trash Free Seas Alliance and Closed Loop Partners, with PepsiCo, 3M, Procter & Gamble, American Chemistry Council, and the World Plastics Council, joined to announce the creation of a $150 million funding mechanism for waste management projects in southeast Asia.
Implementing a circular economy, and solving the marine debris problem, takes action from every sector. Governments have a role to play in implementing sound, smart, science-based and locally relevant solutions that allow the private sector and civil society to act. Together, we can benefit not just the ocean, but people and communities around the world.
Susan Ruffo has over a decade of experience working on environmental issues in and out of government. She is currently managing director for international initiatives at Ocean Conservancy.
Strengthening deep seabed legal protection in the age of climate change.
HEADNOTE ❧ The issue of deep seabed mining, how to manage it, and who benefits from it was a topic of intense debate during the lengthy period of negotiations to develop the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in the 1970s and 1980s. Now that mining is set to get underway, It is still a topic of heated concern, which is why here we present a cluster of articles on seafloor mining in advance of the July meeting of the instrumentality created by UNCLOS to regulate sea-floor mining, the International Seabed Authority.
