Month: September 2008

Part Two: Canada’s Take on Trash

  • Gerry Moore’s the CEO of Island Waste Management – the company that runs the waste program on Prince Edward Island. He’s pointing at an aerial shot of the compost facility. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

The recycling and composting rate
in the United States runs just around thirty
percent. That means seventy percent of our
waste still goes to landfills. Government
officials and others in charge of recycling
programs say we’re doing pretty well with
what we have available. But there’s a
community that’s challenging that assumption.
Kinna Ohman reports:

Transcript

The recycling and composting rate
in the United States runs just around thirty
percent. That means seventy percent of our
waste still goes to landfills. Government
officials and others in charge of recycling
programs say we’re doing pretty well with
what we have available. But there’s a
community that’s challenging that assumption.
Kinna Ohman reports:

Prince Edward Island’s one of those places where people who grow up here, stay here.
And it’s no wonder. The island’s off Canada’s eastern coast. It’s covered with rolling
green farmland, dark forests, and copper-red beaches. It’s Canada’s smallest province –
about the size of Delaware.

Prince Edward Island has a population of only 160,000. There seems to be enough room
for everyone.

But not for every thing.

Around ten years ago, the residents of Prince Edward Island saw their landfills filling up.
That meant digging more. They wanted to do something about it – and fast.

So they started an aggressive recycling and composting program.

Gerry Moore’s the CEO of Island Waste Management – the company that runs the
program. Moore says to make it happen quickly,

“We had to make this mandatory. It wasn’t something that we could go out and ask
people, ‘well, listen, this is the right thing to environmentally.’ We made it
mandatory.”

Moore says they had to be tough. If people didn’t separate their compost and recycling
from their waste, the company refused to pick it up. That was a difficult time for
politicians.

“And, to be quite honest with you, in the initial stages, it was fairly painful. But, if
we didn’t do what we did, when we did it, the landfill we have now would be totally
full and we’d have to have another one. We’re recycling everything we totally
possibly can.”

(sounds of a compost facility)

And they are. People and businesses on Prince Edward Island recycle and compost 65%
of their waste. That’s more than double the average in the U.S.

A lot of the former waste now goes to the island’s composting facility. The facility takes
care of miscellaneous garbage that can’t be recycled – things such as certain types of
paper and food scraps.

(sound of door closing)

Gordon Smith shows me the compost curing warehouse. We’re now sealed in with
steaming mounds of dark compost that almost reach the ceiling. It’s muggy and hot.
About 130 degrees.

“So this is our finished compost you’re looking at right here. This large pile. And
that large pile over there as well.”

Smith’s the facilities supervisor for ADI – the company running the composting plant.
The facility handles 30,000 tons every year.

And with all that, you’d think Prince Edward Islanders would say ‘job done.’ Right? But
they’re trying to reduce landfill waste even more.

They want businesses to start using packaging that can be composted or recycled. Many
local businesses have switched.

But there’s a problem. Big multinational chain stores bring goods to Prince Edward
Island in packaging that cannot be recycled or composted. It all ends up in the island’s
landfill.

Gerry Moore knows his province is too small to really influence these companies. So
that’s where he hopes other communities will help out and join in.

“There will be initial pain with that in the front end. And a lot of politicians and
public figures don’t want to go through that pain. But, you know, we only have one
earth. And whether you’re from New York, or Prince Edward Island, or all over
the globe, anything we can remanufacture and reuse is only going to extend the life
of the planet.”

And Prince Edward Island officials think if they can do it, other places can too – if they
have the political will.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

Related Links

Part One: Canada’s Take on Trash

  • Jen Spence's collection of trash/ recycling containers on the east side of Toronto. The city has retooled its recycling program in recent years to make it easier for residents. The big blue container is for recycling, the green hanging pail is for compost. Toronto only picks up trash twice a month - but Spence's family doesn't even fill that small trash can. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Sometimes it takes a little public
embarrassment to get on the right track.
Back in 2000, the city of Toronto couldn’t
find a place to send its garbage – so it
started trucking trash across the border
to the US. Julie Grant reports that inspired
Toronto to create one of the most aggressive
recycling programs in North America:

Transcript

Sometimes it takes a little public
embarrassment to get on the right track.
Back in 2000, the city of Toronto couldn’t
find a place to send its garbage – so it
started trucking trash across the border
to the US. Julie Grant reports that inspired
Toronto to create one of the most aggressive
recycling programs in North America:

Some days Toronto has sent as many as 150 trucks full of
trash 300 miles to a landfill in the U.S. For those of you
counting at home, that’s 90,000 highway miles a day. That’s
not only bad for the environment. As gas prices have risen,
it’s also bad for Toronto’s bottom line.

But the bigger issue was Toronto wasn’t taking care of its
own trash. It wasn’t even keeping it in Canada. It was
trucking it to Michigan.

And the people in Michigan – they didn’t like it too much.

They’ve complained about the stink of Toronto’s trash for
years.

They even got the U.S. Congress to look at ways to stop it
from crossing the border.

But, free trade even covers a commodity such as garbage.

The people in Toronto are a little embarrassed by it all.

(sound of a neighborhood)

David Wallett looks perfectly pleased with the landscaping in
his small lawn in east Toronto. But his eyes tilt downward
when he’s asked about shipping the city’s waste to Michigan.

“The downside of that is all those trucks ripping down the
401. I mean that can’t be good for the environment to have
lots of trucks burning gas just getting it there.”

But the City of Toronto had signed a contract with a
Michigan landfill. So the trucks kept ripping down highway
401, even as fuel costs got higher and higher.

Geoff Rathbone is Toronto’s general manager of solid waste.
He says the contract is a dark cloud – but it got the city and
residents on-board with recycling.

“The shipment to Michigan really became a wake up call that
allowed us to set very aggressive waste diversion targets.
And to realize that what we were shipping out of our country
was really more of a resource than a waste.”

Rathbone says Toronto set a tough goal – to reduce the
waste stream by 70%. And the city put up nearly a half-
billion dollars to do it.

But a funny thing happened as they started increasing their
recycling stream. Oil prices kept rising. That meant
commodity prices kept rising, too. Metals, plastics, and
paper have started to gain real value. Recycling paid!

And Toronto kept re-tooling its recycling program to make it
really easy for people.

(sound of a neighborhood)

On the east side of Toronto, Dick Wallett and his neighbors
each have one of those huge cart-like garbage barrels – the
ones with a handle and wheels. But it’s not for trash. It’s for
recyclables.

Jen Spence says it’s much easier than it used to be.

“For awhile it was very complicated. We had to put
newspapers in one bin and glass and bottles and jars in
another bin.”

Now they just throw everything into that one big container
and wheel it to the street. The city picks up and sorts the
recyclables. For free. It also picks up compost. You know,
food waste. Spence takes out a small pail from under the
kitchen sink to show me. It’s latched shut.

“This is the green bin. The city of Toronto sends this out to
anyone who’s going to be producing garbage. It collects
flies really badly, and it’s hard to clean, so they send out
these bags that are perfectly for it. It’s a nice size. It fills up
pretty quick and doesn’t stink. We used to have a huge can
and now it’s just that little guy that goes out every two
weeks.”

The city makes it kind of hard to take out regular trash –
things that can’t be recycled or composted. Like Spence
said, it’s only picked twice a month. And you pay as you
throw. The more you make, the more you pay.

Toronto has been able to cut the number of trucks headed to
the landfill in Michigan in half. And it’s moving toward it’s
goal of reducing the waste stream by 70%.

The city even plans to make energy out of the compost it’s
collecting.

The city plans to generate electricity and eventually make a
biofuel from the compost. That will be used to run Toronto’s
trucks to the landfill.

Oh, but those trucks won’t be going to the landfill in
Michigan.

The city has finally found a Canadian landfill that will start
taking Toronto’s waste in 2010.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Dirt on the Coal Supply

  • This coal fired power plant sits at the corner of the SIU campus in Carbondale, Illinois. It has sulfur scrubbers and other technology that allow it to burn Illinois coal. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Presidential candidates John McCain
and Barack Obama are trying to sell us on a
clean energy future. And they’ve got a laundry
list of ideas, including conservation, solar
and wind power, and safer nuclear energy.
But they both want to tweak an old reliable
fuel, too. That would be American coal.
Shawn Allee looks at why McCain
and Obama are gung-ho on coal:

Transcript

Presidential candidates John McCain
and Barack Obama are trying to sell us on a
clean energy future. And they’ve got a laundry
list of ideas, including conservation, solar
and wind power, and safer nuclear energy.
But they both want to tweak an old reliable
fuel, too. That would be American coal.
Shawn Allee looks at why McCain
and Obama are gung-ho on coal:

One reason McCain and Obama tout coal is they’re convinced we have plenty of it.

And they even agree on how to make that point.

McCain first.

McCain: “Our coal reserves are larger than Saudi Arabia’s supply of oil.”

Obama: “We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal, we got more coal than just about
everybody else.”

The Saudi Arabia of Coal.

That’s a sexy political metaphor – it sounds like coal’s just waiting to be scooped up.

Where do politicians get this idea?

“It is really based on data published by the Energy Information Administration.”

That’s Mike Mellish. He crunches coal projection numbers for that agency.

Politicians cite a government figure that we have 250 years worth of coal.

Mellish calls that a very rough estimate. Mellish says we get that number by estimating
how much coal we can get out of the ground economically.

Then, analysts compare that to how much we burn in factories and power plants right
now.

“So that’s really the basis of that statement of 250 years.”

Mellish says, if we use more coal, we’d literally burn through the supply faster.

There are critics who pounce on the idea we have plenty of coal. One of them’s Richard
Heinberg.

Heinberg studies energy for the Post-Carbon Institute, a green think tank. He says
politicians should not expect cheap coal for centuries.

“It assumes we can continue extracting this stuff out of the ground at constant rates
until, one day, it all just runs out.”

Heinberg says America does have lots of coal, but the amount under the ground isn’t the
only thing that counts.

“We tend to get the cheap, easy stuff first, then the production peaks and tails off
afterward.”

Heinberg predicts companies will have to invest money to keep finding new coal, and
that will raise coal prices – not in centuries – but in a few decades.

And Heinbergs says there’s another reason Obama and McCain shouldn’t have so much
faith in coal.

Coal plants put loads of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that makes the global
warming problem worse.

Both candidates want new technologies to put coal’s carbon emissions in the ground.

“But there are a lot of questions as to whether this is really going to work. The cost
of capturing all that carbon dioxide and moving it around and burying it will be
enormous and they will add to the cost of electricity we can make with coal.”

For Heinberg all this talk about the Saudi Arabia of coal, and that 250 year figure, it’s all
a big bet – and it could have a high cost if we’re wrong.

“If we’re going on the assumption that there’s plenty of coal out there for many
decades to come at current prices and we build infrastructure accordingly and then
a couple of decades from now, suddenly coal becomes much more expensive and
scarce we will have gotten ourselves in a very difficult place, sort of like we’d done
with oil.”

A lot of energy experts are more upbeat on coal than Heinberg.

They admit it’s not clear how much coal we have, but it’s a heck of a lot, and we know
how to get it.

They say they don’t blame Obama and McCain for giving clean coal a chance. It’s just
that we should have started testing it a decade ago.

Hmm, a decade ago?

Politicians don’t like to say we’ve missed the mark by a decade.

It’s no wonder we haven’t heard that on the campaign trail.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Bias in Bisphenol-A Studies

Two government agencies are issuing very different

messages about the safety of a plastic used to package food.

Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Two government agencies are issuing very different messages about the safety of a plastic used to package food. Lester Graham reports:


The Food and Drug Administration recently declared there’s “an adequate margin of safety” for a plastic called bisphenol A or BPA. But right after that the National Toxicology Program found BPA is of “some concern.”

Sarah Burkhalter is with the online environmental news service Grist-dot-org. She has found there are 115 studies on BPA… and the FDA is chiefly relying on plastic industry studies.


“104 of those were done by government scientists and university labs. 90 percent of them found BPA could harm human health. All eleven of the industry studies found that BPA was safe. So it makes sense that relying on those industry-funded studies that the FDA would find it to be safe.”


BPA is used in all sorts of things, including the linings of cans of food and baby bottles.


For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Eating Right for the Climate

How far your food travels might be less important

than the kind of food you buy. Lester Graham reports on a

new study that looks at the connections between food and

greenhouse gasses:

Transcript

How far your food travels might be less important than the kind of food you buy. Lester Graham reports on a new study that looks at the connections between food and greenhouse gasses:


One of the reasons more people have been buying local food is because it doesn’t travel as far, use more energy and create as much greenhouse gas emissions.


But a study from Carnegie Mellon suggests the kind of food you buy is more important. The study indicates emissions from animals such as methane and nitrous oxides can be as much as twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide from transportation.


Christopher Weber is the lead author of the study.


“Because of smaller amounts of emissions, but more potent emissions of these gasses, it turns out that the CO2 associated with energy to move food around is not as important as these non-energy related greenhouse gasses.”


Weber acknowledges there are more good reasons to buy local food than just greenhouse gas emissions. But cutting down on meat in your diet might reduce greenhouses gasses more.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Airports Ask for Bailout

  • Fuel costs are skyrocketing. That means air carriers are cutting back on routes... and airports say they're losing revenue as a result. (Photo courtesy of Boeing)

The airport industry says high fuel prices are

threatening the stability of the entire system. Rebecca

Williams reports the industry wants its fuel needs to be

given top priority:

Transcript

The airport industry says high fuel prices are threatening the stability of the entire system. Rebecca Williams reports the industry wants its fuel needs to be given top priority:


Fuel is a big deal for the airline industry. The industry says for every dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil – fuel costs go up 465 million dollars for the airlines.

So they’ve been cutting back… stopping service on more than 400 routes since March.

And for airports… that means losing their main source of revenue.

So they want the federal government to bail them out if fuel keeps going up.

Sean Broderick is with the American Association of Airport Executives.

“Petroleum based products are what make airplanes fly, period. And while industry and aircraft manufacturers are working on alternatives there is no equivalent to wind power.”

The group wants the government to allow airlines to borrow from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve… or be given subsidies for jet fuel.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Hurricanes Getting More Powerful

A new study finds the worst hurricanes are

becoming more intense. Lester Graham reports the authors

speculate it might be because of climate change:

Transcript

A new study finds the worst hurricanes are becoming more intense. Lester Graham reports the authors speculate it might be because of climate change:


James Elsner is a climatologist at Florida State University. He and his team have been studying wind speeds in hurricanes…


“Well, we found the strongest tropical cyclones, globally, are increasing in intensity.”


Elsner says this is exactly what computer models suggested should happen as the oceans warmed due to climate change. The theory goes that warmer water gives the storms more energy…


“There’s a clean connection with the theory that I think allows us some speculation that as the seas continue to warm, the strongest storms should get stronger.”


And that could mean more damage to coastal areas, put more people at risk, and cause more damage and oil spills at offshore drilling platforms.


For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Living Near the Polluting Fastlane

  • Researchers have found that breathing the air near busy streets can actually be markedly worse for your health than the air that's even just 200 yards away from that busy street. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

A lot of people like to wake up with a morning run.

But where you choose to exercise can have a big impact on

your health. Karen Kelly has the story:

Transcript

A lot of people like to wake up with a morning run. But where you choose to exercise can have a big impact on your health. Karen Kelly has the story:


In downtown neighborhoods like mine, in Ottawa, Canada, most people walk to work.


And there are two ways to get there – take one of the main drags like Elgin Street…


(sound of traffic)


Or, take the foot path along the Rideau Canal – just two blocks away.


(sound of quieter path)


Now, if you’re in a hurry, you might choose the busier, more direct route. But researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario have found if you do that, you’ll be sucking in a lot more pollution.


Brian McCarry is an air quality expert who led the study.


“If you’re back from a major road – typically 200 yards from a major road – then the air pollution is about 10 times less than if you were on that major road.”


Now, it sounds like common sense – you’re near traffic? You’re going to breathe in exhaust.


But McCarry says they were surprised by the difference in pollution between the busy street and a quieter street even one or two blocks away.


“I think what we’re really surprised by is the impacts of cars and trucks along major roads, and how quickly that impact, or the concentrations, disperse. When you are actually driving around seeing this, you go ‘wow, that’s amazing.’”


Now, usually instruments that measure pollution are stuck in one place. What’s different about this study is that they piled their instruments into a van and measured the air quality while they were driving. So they saw the number of particulates surge on the highway – those are tiny particles that come out of our tailpipes – and then quickly drop off when the van goes into a quiet neighborhood.


McCarry says those particulates, along with oxides of nitrogen, are bad for our lungs and our heart, and can be deadly for someone who already has health problems.


“It’s not just the dying, but there are many people who do show up at their doctor’s complaining of not feeling well, of having headaches, shortness of breath, and then there are a number of people who don’t show up at their doctor who just simply don’t go to work because they don’t feel very good during these high ozone events.”


And for those of us driving on highways?


McCarry says the air quality there is horrible. He says keep your car windows closed and use the recirculate button to avoid bringing in more pollution.


The same goes for people who live near these roads: close your windows during rush hour.


I talked to some commuters who live in my neighborhood and asked them if pollution influenced their decisions.


“Even though I live right downtown, what I tend to do is find a route that actually skirts the city completely.”


“If I can avoid main streets, I will go out of my way to do that. It’s not necessarily first and foremost an environment thing but I do appreciate good air quality and I also like the scenery of the canal and the pathways in Ottawa.”


These findings on air pollution have led to some changes.


In Hamilton, Ontario, they passed a no-idling law and plan to build future bike paths away from major roads. Plus, they and Toronto replaced their old street sweepers –
that kicked up toxic dust – with new ones that remove dust completely.


That’s attracted interest from some American cities.


But while there are many changes that cities can make, researcher Brian McCarry says these findings can help all of us make healthier choices.


For the Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Underground Co2 a Long Way Off

  • Corn-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland creates excess carbon dioxide while brewing ethanol and other alcohols from corn. The company is donating carbon dioxide from a plant in Decatur, Illinois. Scientists will bury the CO2 deep underground and test whether the local rock can hold it there indefinitely. If it can, the government may encourage coal-fired power plants and other carbon sources to sequester their carbon underground. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

One of the cheapest, easiest ways to make

electricity in America is to burn coal, but there’s

this little problem of global warming. The coal power

industry is a major offender because burning coal

gives off carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

It’s enough to make you think – should we burn coal at all?

Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope to prove

we can put coal emissions out of sight, out of mind:

Transcript

One of the cheapest, easiest ways to make electricity in America is to burn coal. But there’s this little problem of global warming. The coal power industry is a major offender… because burning coal gives off carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas. It’s enough to make you think – should we burn coal at all? Shawn Allee reports some scientists hope to prove we can put coal emissions out of sight, out of mind:


A big part of our global warming problem starts right in coal country. Recently, I recorded this coal train leaving a coal mine, destined for some power plants.


(sound of coal train)


It was a long train … and across the country, hundreds like it run constantly. The coal power industry generates half our electricity. And that’s responsible for nearly forty percent of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, we chuck into the atmosphere.


Well, wouldn’t it be great if we could reverse some of this? So, when we pull coal out of the Earth and then burn it … we could just send some of the carbon dioxide gas underground?


That’s getting tested by scientists.


I found one.


ALLEE: “What’s your name, sir?”


FINLEY: “Robert Finley. I’m the director for the center for energy and earth resources at Illinois State Geologic Survey.”


Finley wants to take carbon dioxide and bury it deep under the town of Decatur, Illinois.


He says the rock has to be just right.


One layer needs to absorb the carbon dioxide, while other rock has to keep it put.


“In order for the CO2 to remain in the subsurface, to not leak back in the atmosphere, we have to have an excellent seal.”


Finley calls this geological carbon sequestration, and he says it’s worked … in small tests. His experiment and six others across the country are much larger. Finley says the technology is promising, but needs testing.


“Decatur involves two years of characterizing the site and drilling wells before we even inject CO2. Three years of CO2 injection, then two more years of study of the site. So, that in total is a seven year effort.”


Again, he’s gotta make sure the carbon dioxide stays underground … and that it won’t hurt water or other underground resources. But while Finley experiments, coal plants continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s got some environmental groups a little impatient.


“The best way to avoid emissions from burning coal is to not burn it in the first place.”


This is Ron Burke, the Midwest Director for The Union of Concerned Scientists.


“We can meet most of our energy needs by substantially increasing the use of energy efficiency and renewable energy.”


Allee: “But when you listen to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, it seems that both of these candidates seem to want to make it work, when Mr. Finley and others doing work on the ground say I won’t even have my data until 2014.”


Burke: “It’s clear that a lot of elected officials share this aspirational goal to commercially develop so-called clean-coal technology. But right now we can’t depend on it. We shouldn’t be developing plans to mitigate greenhouse gases assuming that technology’s going to be available.”


Geologist Robert Finley says we cannot rely on carbon sequestration exclusively.


Even if CO2 can stay underground forever, there’s no guarantee we can afford to send it there.


“One could argue we should have been doing this five years ago or earlier, but we can’t go forward and simply drill a well next year and move forward without these kinds of studies, because that would be reckless in my view.”


Finley doesn’t apologize for the pace of science.


He says he’s confident it can answer questions about carbon sequestration…. he just hopes it’s in time to make a difference for the global warming problem.


For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Oceans Getting More Acidic

  • The research team collects several samples from each stop along the route to measure the chemical composition of the ocean water. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But half of all man-made CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans. When CO2 mixes with water, it increases the oceans’ acidity. As Ann Dornfeld reports, that acidification is moving closer toward the oceans’ fragile coastal areas:

Transcript

We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But half of all man-made CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans. When CO2 mixes with water, it increases the oceans’ acidity. As Ann Dornfeld reports, that acidification is moving closer toward the oceans’ fragile coastal areas:


If you’ve ever wondered why sparkling water tastes tangy, instead of just bubbly – it’s because of carbonic acid. That’s what’s produced when carbon dioxide is added to water. Some of the CO2 in the world’s oceans is natural, from things like decaying algae. But the oceans also soak up CO2 produced by cars and factories. Once CO2 is absorbed into the ocean, it sinks to the coldest, deepest water for long-term storage.

Chemical oceanographers at Oregon State University are monitoring the chemical composition of the Pacific Ocean to see where the carbon is being stored. On a research vessel several miles off the coast, they lower a series of bottles down to the ocean floor on a winch.


(sound of winches)


Scientists have expected that upwellings would eventually bring some of that CO2 to the coastal zones that are home to a huge array of marine life. They thought it would take a century or more. But a recent study, published in the journal Science, found acidic water fewer than 20 miles off the Pacific Coast.

Grad student Rachel Holzer says that’s alarming.


“The ocean is normally at a very stable pH. It is a buffered system, which means it is not very easy for the pH to change. But recently there’s been evidence that ocean acidification is happening, meaning that the pH is dropping. And that can be very harmful to biological life of all different types.”


Corrosive water can dissolve the calcium carbonate shells of barnacles, mussels, oysters and clams. Coral reefs are also calcium carbonate. So are a lot of planktonic species, including terrapods. Those make up about half of the diet of young salmon.

Burke Hales co-authored the latest study. He’s an Associate Professor of Chemical Oceanography at Oregon State.


“The question is how are these organisms going to respond, you know? Do their shells dissolve, do they just not grow as quickly? If their shells are negatively impacted, are the organisms themselves negatively impacted? And if the organisms are negatively impacted, how does that cascade through the food web?”

Hales says stopping ocean acidification would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.


“There are people who have talked about going out in the ocean and spraying sodium carbonate pellets into the water, which would dissolve and neutralize some of the carbonic acid. Sort of like when you take a Tums, that’s the active ingredient in Tums is calcium carbonate. That’s one idea that’s been proposed. It’s really, really speculative that that would work.”


What’s more, Hales says the process of hauling all of that ocean antacid out to sea and dispersing it could produce as much CO2 as it would neutralize.


“It is depressing. We wish things weren’t this way and moving sort of irreversibly towards worse conditions. But we also know that the oceans do have a lot of ability to adapt. And what we don’t know yet is exactly how this is gonna play out.”


One thing scientists do know is that the acidification has just begun. The corrosive water they found right off the Pacific Coast was from carbon dioxide released about 50 years ago. And over the last half century, CO2 production has only increased.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links