"A group of companies worth a combined $2.4 trillion have added their voice to a growing chorus calling for the economic recovery from the coronavirus to be green."
To better grasp how COVID-19 is linked to the persistent problem of polluted air, our latest BookShelf review recommends going back to a prescient text, “Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution.” While the volume predates the pandemic, it makes painfully clear why, during this crisis, healthy air matters more than ever.
"U.S. President Donald Trump ordered meat processing plants to stay open to protect the nation’s food supply even as workers got sick and died. Yet the plants have increasingly been exporting to China while U.S. consumers face shortages, a Reuters analysis of government data showed."
"Businesses in the United States, Israel and other countries were planning to invest billions in export terminals. Now, those projects are being canceled or delayed."
"Plunging sales could force factories to close and lead to takeovers and mergers, but also bolster sales of electric cars."
"At Brades Farm, a dairy in Lancashire, England, farmers now market their milk as “climate-smart”: The dairy is one of the first to begin feeding its cattle a new supplement that shrinks the amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, that cows emit when they belch."
For reporters investigating the coronavirus-environment connection, you might look to the untreated sewage that can sometimes overflow municipal systems during wet weather, possibly bringing the novel pathogen to beaches and other places where people can get sick from it. The latest TipSheet takes a look at the reality, plus provides story ideas and reporter resources.
"Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels. Now, as major economies prepare green investments to kickstart growth, advocates spy a golden chance to drag the niche energy into the mainstream of a post-pandemic world."
"In some ways, the dire lockdowns undertaken to stop Covid-19 have fast-forwarded us into an unlikely future—one with almost impossibly bold climate action taken all at once, no matter the cost."
"The scientists who study how diseases emerge in a changing environment knew this moment was coming. Climate change is making outbreaks of disease more common and more dangerous."
