Planet Philadelphia

Paths to Creating a Sustainable World - New Planet Philadelphia August 7, 2020

7/31/2020

Yangambi Farm by Axel Fassio/CIFOR, Drawdown Review 3/10/202, Page 61

Methods of Sustainability
Planet Philadelphia 4-5:00 PM Friday 8/7/20
92.9 FM WGGT-LPin Philadelphia
and live streaming at gtownradio.com.

Here are some contemporary approaches to sustainability: one for businesses and communities, the other based on world-wide research.

Karl Schmidtis professor of Practice in Sustainable Engineering at Villanova University. He has a long history of working in business settings on sustainability, particularly as director of sustainability at Johnson and Johnson. He will be discussing modern approaches to sustainability in business settings and giving examples of how he prepares his graduate student engineers to provide sustainable consulting to businesses and townships. He is the director of the innovative RISE (Resilient Innovation through Sustainable Engineering) program at Villanova, which has students applying their sustainability studies to real world businesses/townships and thereby changing these organizations and helping them lower their carbon footprints.
Dr. Katharine Wilkinson is the vice president of Communication and Engagement for Project Drawdown. This project does world-wide research on current techniques that are working to lower greenhouse gases and could be scaled up. Their initial findings came out several years ago and listed 100 techniques. They have recently published an update, The Drawdown Review, which Katherine will discuss.

Please do tune in to Planet Philadelphia
on WGGT-LP 92.9 FM in Philadelphia or
live streaming at gtownradio.com.

Not in Philly?
Gtown Radio has it's own ap! Listen anywhere any time.
Get Gtown Radio Ap here!

You can also listen to all the great G-town Radio programing on
Tunein , Simple Radio, or other aps on your phone or other device.

www.planetphiladelphia.com | www.gtownradio.com | facebook | @planetphila | @gtownradio

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Deadly heat is killing Americans

7/22/2020

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As Philadelphia tackles multiple crises, Covid-19, shootings, unrest spurred by George Floyd's brutal death and excessive police violence, a severe budget shortfall, we are also experiencing a heat wave, something that is becoming more and more common as our climate warms.

This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Deadly heat is killing Americans:
climate death toll rises after
a decade of federal inaction

theguardian.com.

This story is co-published with Columbia Journalism Investigations,
the Center for Public Integrityand Covering Climate Now. Read the full investigation here.

Charlie Rhodes lived alone on a tree-sparse street with sunburned lawns just outside Phoenix, Arizona. At 61, the army veteran’s main connection to the world was Facebook; often, he posted several times a day. But as a heatwave blanketed the region in June 2016 – leading to temperatures among the highest ever recorded – his posts stopped. Three weeks later, a pile of unopened mail outside his door prompted a call to police.

When officers arrived, they were overcome by the odor of rotting garbage, worsened by the still-searing heat. Inside the home, they found the air conditioner broken and its thermometer reading 99F. Rhodes lay dead in the bedroom, his body decomposing. The cause, his autopsy shows: “Complications of environmental heat exposure.”

Yearly heat-related deaths have more than doubled in Arizona in the last decade to 283. Across the country, heat caused at least 10,000 deaths between 1999 and 2016 – more than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods in most years.

Scientists link the warming planet to a rise in dangerous heat in the US, as well as the spread of infectious diseases and other health conditions. Federal research predicts heatstroke and similar illnesses will claim tens of thousands of American lives each year by the end of the century. Already, higher temperatures pose lethal risks: the five warmest years nationwide have all occurred since 2006. In the last six decades, the number of annual heatwaves in 50 US cities has, on average, tripled. In contrast to a viral pandemic, this is a quiet, insidious threat with no end point.

A decade of missed opportunities
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is charged with helping cities and states adapt to threats like extreme heat. Its climate program, created more than 10 years ago, is the federal government’s only sustained effort to bolster state and local health departments’ fight against global warming. But the program has been hampered by a decade of underfunding, limited expertise and political resistance, Columbia Journalism Investigations and the Center for Public Integrityfound.

Interviews with more than 100 people and a review of hundreds of pages of government records show the Obama administration, while pushing measures to combat climate change, missed opportunities to expand the program. Under Donald Trump, officials have tried to eliminate it.

The tepid federal response has left state and local health workers ill-equipped to act, exposing communities to underappreciated threats that will only get worse.

Arizona’s health department receives around $200,000 a year to fund its climate team. But for a state with 7 million people – including a growing number of isolated, older residents like Rhodes – experts say it’s not enough to pay for research and, most importantly, action.

Rhodes, a once gregarious jokester who cut himself off from family and friends after the loss of his job and father, had devised a method to handle the heat: he covered his windows with aluminum foil and ran the air conditioner in his bedroom. But as the temperature hit 120F near his home, no one checked on him.
Asked what the program has done to prevent people like Rhodes from dying of heat, the Arizona health department spokesperson Holly Poynter said its advisories on the hottest days include a sentence encouraging people to check on at-risk friends, family and neighbors twice a day. “Heat-related deaths are preventable,” she said, “and continued work is needed due to increasing vulnerable populations within the state.”

The CDC defended its efforts on climate change, saying its program has assisted health departments successfully for years. “We’re proud of the work that our program is doing,” said Patrick Breysse, who heads the agency’s environmental health center and oversees its climate activities. “We’re excited about the leadership role we play.”

Some CDC-aided health departments lead the nation in heat illness prevention. San Francisco’s climate program helped devise heat emergency response plans and mapped vulnerable city neighborhoods. Now, officials use these maps to encourage neighbors to check on each other. Climate programs elsewhere helped change the threshold for heat advisories from 100F to 95F after finding residents get sick at lower temperatures.

Yet many departments funded by the CDC are struggling to fulfill the program’s mission, according to government and academic reports and interviews with state and local health workers.

In North Carolina, program employees asked their CDC counterparts for guidance and expertise to identify the state’s climate health threats. Records show the agency failed to provide the assistance it promised early on. After nearly a decade of research, health workers only recently began reaching out to the most vulnerable residents.

In Florida, heat-related hospitalizations are on the rise. But health officials there barred the state climate team from publicly acknowledging global warming’s link to heat. Then, with the CDC’s imprimatur, they evicted the program from the health department.

Most of the country’s 3,000 state and local health departments, meanwhile, get no such funding. They’re on their own to figure out what to do and how to pay for it.

A slow start
Federal officials have known for decades that climate change poses a public health crisis. In 1989, the US Environmental Protection Agency issued a 100-page report on how global warming could affect human health. It urged public health agencies to fund research on extreme heat and provide health departments with “trained professionals”. By 2000, the US released its first recurring assessment of the changing climate’s impacts. Again, it called for “investments in advancing the public health infrastructure”.

Five years later, Dr Howard Frumkin, a veteran epidemiologist hired to run CDC’s environmental health center, brought the nation’s leading public health agency into the battle against climate change. “We knew that the climate was warming,” said Frumkin, who viewed the CDC as “past the point where we needed to be stepping up”.

Obama’s mixed climate record
In 2009 – then the second-hottest year on record – Frumkin seized an opportunity to expand the CDC’s climate efforts. That February, he testified before a congressional committee about challenges brought by global warming. Healthdepartments, he said, require climate and health training and data to plan for impacts. “CDC has in place many of the building blocks,” he told the committee, but it needed to assemble them into a serious effort.
A month later, a Democratic-led Congress gave the CDC $7.5m for its climate program, to be renewed yearly with congressional approval. The new initiative seeded climate and health activities in 10 health departments. Frumkin hoped it would eventually expand to all 50 states.

Shortly after Congress funded the program, Dr Thomas Frieden, then the newlyappointed CDC director, introduced his “winnable battles” – seven health initiatives that his agency prioritized. Climate was not among them. Most of those programs – nutrition, food safety – received an annual $50m to $700m by the end of his eight-year tenure. The climate program, by contrast, never exceeded $10m. In 2013, the CDC recommended reducing that budget.

As the CDC’s director, Frieden rarely used his bully pulpit to address threats posed by the warming planet. During a 20-minute keynote speech at a national environmental health conference, he discussed the topic for 13 seconds. A 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, criticized the CDC for failing to provide leadership on the issue.

Frieden, for his part, disputes claims that he did not prioritize climate change and insists he cares about the issue, pointing to the CDC’s work combating dangerous particulate matter produced by cars and coal plants. “It will have major public health consequences,” he said of climate change. “But there’s only a certain amount that public health programs can do.”

The CDC’s lackluster response contrasted with President Barack Obama’s public overtures and policy initiatives on climate. Former senior White House officials – including those who helped implement climate policies – admit the administration didn’t apply enough pressure on the CDC to act.

In December 2015, Republicans in Congress rejected a proposal to boost spending on the CDC program to $18m. The increase would have more than doubled its size.

When a broken air conditioner is lethal
The summer of 2016 – when Charlie Rhodes died – showed there was no time to lose in the push to understand and stem heat death. The previous eight years, the number of heat-related fatalities in Arizona had averaged 145. That jumped to 219 in 2016, and 264 the year after. A report produced by Maricopa county – where the largest number of the state’s heat deaths have occurred – found that men, Native Americans and people 75 and older were most at risk.

Gene Moore, 82, fit all three categories. A Quechan tribe member, he spent much of his life on its reservation, near Yuma, Arizona, before moving near Phoenix in 2010 to live with his son. Over the years, Moore’s health declined, but he remained mobile and enjoyed talking on the phone with friends, according to his son, Ivan.
In June 2017 – several weeks after Ivan had his home air conditioner repaired – he took his family camping in the mountains. Gene stayed behind. The day Ivan left, the temperature hit 118F. Phoenix went 11 days at or above 110F, one of only five such stretches on record. Four happened in the last three decades.

A week later, Ivan’s brother called to say Moore had stopped answering his phone. Ivan dialed the police. They found Moore dead on his bedroom floor, his window open. The air conditioner had broken again, and the temperature inside topped 105F. Moore’s autopsy shows cardiovascular disease caused his death, while heat played a significant contributing factor.

Arizona health officials still don’t know why more residents like Moore are dying or how best to protect them. Temperatures are rising in the state, but the hottest summers don’t always match the highest death tolls. The Arizona State University researcher David Hondula, who works with the state’s climate team, contributed to a study ruling out temperature as the only reason. Other factors such as homelessness and substance abuse may play a role, he said, but the climate program doesn’t have money to keep studying the problem.

“If additional funding existed, we could really dive in to answer this question,” Hondula said. Instead, the limited CDC money – budgeted before the spike in deaths – supports awareness campaigns in poorer areas such as Yuma county.

Many Arizona cities offer cooling centers – air-conditioned libraries, churches and other shelters – for residents to escape the heat. Moore and Rhodes both had access to a vehicle. Cooling centers were nearby. Health workers are now surveying residents who visit cooling centers, but they say it takes money to determine why so many others don’t.

Ivan Moore, who grew up hearing about heat death victims on the radio, blames himself for what happened to his father. “I should have had someone check on him sooner,” Ivan said, even though less than 36 hours had passed between Gene’s last email to his family and when police found him. “He had quite a few years left on him.”

A worker collapse at a sweltering factory
In North Carolina, the CDC-funded program has helped enable what health department spokesperson Kelly Haight Connor described in an email as “the substantial growth in climate and health adaptation”. Even so, documents show the climate team ran into roadblocks almost as soon as it tried to evaluate the state’s preparedness for climate change. It was still seeking the agency’s assistance when, in 2015, it completed an analysis showing heat-related mortality would increase over the coming decade.

On 22 June that year, Sherion Winfrey, 63, had just returned to work after vacation and had nine days before she was due to retire. For nearly 40 years, she worked at the same oil- and air-filter factory in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a city in the Sandhills. She’d learned to pack frozen water bottles in a cooler to keep herself refreshed on the hot assembly line. But that day, as the temperature outside hit 96F, she collapsed during her shift. Rushed to a hospital, she died early that afternoon.

A state inspection of the factory the next day found that heat from industrial ovens and the metal walls and roof of the un-air-conditioned production line raised the indoor heat index – a combined measure of temperature and humidity – to over 106F and into the Occupational Safety and Health department’s “danger” heat classification. The inspector recommended the factory allow employees time to acclimate to the heat after an absence. But the investigation into Winfrey’s death ended after a medical examiner found that Winfrey suffered “a fatal pulmonary embolism and did not die from exposure to extreme temperatures”. Recent research suggests this type of blood clotting may be brought on by daily temperature swings.

Danny Muhammad, Winfrey’s son, has no doubt heat contributed to her death. Winfrey complained to family about the factory’s stifling environment. “The heat index was out of this world that day,” Muhammad said. It was the ninth consecutive day that temperatures had reached at least 94F – seven degrees hotter than the June average. Winfrey’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2017 against the factory, citing extreme indoor temperatures as the cause of her death, but the case was later dismissed. A spokesperson for the factory declined to comment.

It took another three years after Winfrey’s death for the North Carolina program’s heat education efforts to begin in four Sandhills counties – and not where she had lived.

Budget cuts and self-censorship under Trump
In the years since the Trump administration took over, the political pressure hampering some of the CDC climate program’s grantees has also been applied to the program itself. Former and current staff said senior agency officials, aware of Trump’s denials of climate science, have tried to keep the program operating under the radar.
Self-censorship surfaced quickly after the 2016 election, even before Trump assumed office. In December of that year, the CDC environmental health director, Patrick Breysse, indefinitely postponed a first-ever climate symposium that was scheduled for after the inauguration. George Luber, then the CDC’s climate chief, remembers his superiors warning the event would be poorly timed; Breysse said the postponement was for budgetary reasons.

The environmental health chief acknowledges that his staff debated whether to use the term “climate change”. He later combined the climate and asthma programs and, internal documents suggest, omitted the word “climate” from the new branch’s title.

Breysse insists the White House never directed his actions. But they served as the basis for a whistleblower complaint filed by Luber, who was removed from his CDC post in 2018. The complaint alleged that Luber was ousted because of his outspokenness on global warming. It stirred a hornet’s nest of public attention, but some program insiders allege his removal had more to do with his mismanagement and mistreatmentof employees than his advocacy.

The CDC, which refused to comment on “personnel matters”, said its climate program was running better than ever. The agency pointed to the “mini grants” it has doled out through partner organizations to help another 10 health departments, one-time funding of $5,000 to $50,000.

Meanwhile, every one of Trump’s budget proposals has tried to eliminate the program.

The inaction in Washington contrasts with some local efforts to save lives endangered by the climate crisis. In Phoenix, spurred on by the sustained surge in heat deaths, some groups hand out 250,000 bottles of water annually to the homeless. Others distribute heat awareness magnets and brochures to the elderly. Still others are developing home sensors that will notify friends and family when indoor temperatures climb.

Many vulnerable residents fall through the cracks. Arizona medical examiner records of heat deaths are filled with accounts of ageing and isolated people who hadn’t been heard from for days before a wellness check was requested.

Among them were Larry and Kathleen Purchase, 69 and 68 respectively, who died from environmental heat exposure in their Phoenix home during an unusual string of triple-digit days in September 2018. Married for almost 50 years, the two were active in their community and ran a small computer repair service, said Larry’s brother, Terry. When their 1970s rooftop air conditioner broke, they didn’t have the several hundred dollars to fix it.

Terry remembers them as “good stewards of the environment”, a tenet of their Christian faith. They didn’t believe in human-caused climate change, he said.

The day they were found, the temperature in their home hovered around 100F.

Dean Russell, Elisabeth Gawthrop, Veronica Penney, Ali Raj and Bridget Hickey are reporting fellows for Columbia Journalism Investigations, an investigative reporting unit at the Columbia Journalism School. Funding for CJI comes from the school’s Investigative Reporting Resource and the Energy Foundation. Additional support for this story was provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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Podcast: July 17, 2020 show

7/18/2020

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Some communities and their members don’t get heard on environmental issues by the general public. Hear these Planet Philadelphia radio show guests on why this is important and needs to change:
      • Chandra Farley, Just Energy Director of the Partnership for Southern Equity.
      • Sarah Shanley Hope, Executive Director of The Solutions Project.
      • Howard Bailey, Germantown Philadelphia resident and consultant.

Full Planet Philadelphia show aired July 17, 2020:

Planet Philadelphia environmental radio show airs 4-5:00 PM EST 1st and 3rd Friday each month.
Please do tune in then to WGGT-LP 92.9 FM in Philadelphia or live stream at gtownradio.com.

Gtown Radio has it's own ap! Listen anywhere any time.
Get Gtown Radio Ap here!

www.planetphiladelphia.com | www.gtownradio.com | facebook | @planetphila | @gtownradio

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New Planet Philadelphia Today: Who Gets Heard? Voices on the Environment

7/17/2020

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Some communities and their members don’t get heard on environmental issues by the general public. Tune in to Planet Philadelphia 4-5:00 today to hear Chandra Farley, Sarah Shanley Hope, and Howard Bailey on why this is important and needs to change.

Chandra Farley, Congressional testimony

Chandra Farley is the Just Energy Director of the Partnership for Southern Equity in Atlanta GA. The Partnership advances policies and institutional actions that promote racial equity and shared prosperity for metropolitan Atlanta and the American South. She will be discussing her community-based work to promote the environment, especially for women of color – how the stories of this community and their solutions work need to be part of the media’s conversation.

Sarah Shanley Hope, in the center, at Ready For 100 rally

Sarah Shanley Hope is the Executive Director of The Solutions Project in Oakland CA which serves as a national advocacy organization and grantmaker for climate solutions and energy. The Project invests in front line communities and leaders of color to amplify their stories and solutions. She will be talking about a recent report from their agency on media coverage of women in clean energy. She will be in conversation with Chandra Farley below, with whom she often works.

Howard Bailey at G-Town radio station

Howard Bailey, is a Germantown Philadelphia resident and consultant. He has been active in the Germantown Info Hub and many other community organizations. He also is active in Philadelphia’s Transition Town movement, a world-wide movement (Transition Town) that started in England. He will be talking about this movement and its attempt to provide a different way for communities to organize and help themselves, which includes in regard to the oncoming environmental crises.

Tune in 4-5:00 PM today to hear this and more at
Planet Philadelphia
on WGGT-LP 92.9 FM in Philadelphia or
live stream at gtownradio.com.

Not in Philly?
Gtown Radio has it's own ap! Listen anywhere any time.
Get Gtown Radio Ap here!

You can also listen to all the great G-town Radio programing on
Tunein , Simple Radio, or other aps on your phone or other device.

www.planetphiladelphia.com | www.gtownradio.com | facebook | @planetphila | @gtownradio

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Who Gets Heard? New Planet Philadelphia Friday, July 17th

7/10/2020

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Who Gets Heard?
Voices on the Environment
Planet Philadelphia 4-5:00 PM Friday 7/17/20

Some communities and their members don’t get heard on environmental issues by the general public. Here are some attempts to bring attention to that fact and/or to provide alternative approaches to the environment for their members. Tune in to 92.9 FM WGGT-LP in Philadelphia and live streaming at gtownradio.com on July 17th to hear:

•   Sarah Shanley Hope is the Executive Director of The Solutions Project in Oakland CA which serves as a national advocacy organization and grantmaker for climate solutions and energy. The Project invests in front line communities and leaders of color to amplify their stories and solutions. She will be talking about a recent report from their agency on media coverage of women in clean energy. She will be in conversation with Chandra Farley below, with whom she often works.

•   Chandra Farley is the Just Energy Director of the Partnership for Southern Equity in Atlanta GA. The Partnership advances policies and institutional actions that promote racial equity and shared prosperity for metropolitan Atlanta and the American South. She will be discussing her community-based work to promote the environment, especially for women of color – how the stories of this community and their solutions work need to be part of the media’s conversation.

•   Howard Bailey, is a Germantown Philadelphia resident and consultant. He has been active in the Germantown Info Hub and many other community organizations. He also is active in Philadelphia’s Transition Town movement, a world-wide movement (Transition Town) that started in England. He will be talking about this movement and its attempt to provide a different way for communities to organize and help themselves, which includes in regard to the oncoming environmental crises.

Please do tune in to hear Planet Philadelphia
on WGGT-LP 92.9 FM in Philadelphia or
live stream at gtownradio.com.

Not in Philly?
Gtown Radio has it's own ap! Listen anywhere any time.
Get Gtown Radio Ap here!

You can also listen to all the great G-town Radio programing on
Tunein , Simple Radio, or other aps on your phone or other device.

www.planetphiladelphia.com | www.gtownradio.com | facebook | @planetphila | @gtownradio

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More information about events/opportunities mentioned on the July 3rd show

7/7/2020

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On the July 3rd Planet Philadelphia in her report Linda Rosenwein mentioned some interesting things that are happening in the community. So that you can follow up on them and learn more here is some information:

Free groceries
Germantown Supply Hub Mutual Aid
This is intentional community building, not just freebies. Free food will be available as long as the community keeps giving back so that supplies are replenished.
215-7201634
@germantownsupplyhub
Address: "The People's Lot" near Uncle Bobbie's Cafe, Church Lane
Wed. 2-6pm
Sat. 12-5pm

Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Harvest 2020 program
If you sign up, you will get information about how to start a home garden and/or make yours
more productive. There will also be information about how to share your food from your
garden if you have more than you need. People who can't deliver their food directly can use Food Connect, an app connecting those with excess food with those who need it.
https://phsonline.org/harvest2020/overview

Free Waste Recycling for clothing and electronics
Free pick up at your doorstep through SmartCityPHL (pilot project with Retrievr) for Philadelphia. There's a small fee for large electronics (like computers).
Schedule pickup:
retrievr.com
text PICKUP to 757-70-FETCH (757-703-3824)
call 757-70-FETCH (757-703-3824)

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Listen to the podcast of the show aired July 3, 2020

7/6/2020

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In case you missed the show last Friday, here's another chance to hear these thoughtful interviews with with the Congressman Dwight Evans and Rev. Mitchell C. Hescox. Rev. Hescox & Congressman Evans both work hard for a healthier environment and life for all, young and old. Listen to this podcast of the Planet Philadelphia environmental radio show originally broadcast July 3, 2020 to hear about their approaches to working with legislatures include moral or religious as well as political avenues. We explore recent initiatives in both of these areas, particularly in light of the Covid19 pandemic.

https://www.mixcloud.com/PlanetPhiladelphia/july-3rd-show-interviews-with-the-rev-mitchell-c-hescox-and-congressman-dwight-evans/

Planet Philadelphia  environmental radio show airs 4-5:00 PM EST 1st and 3rd Friday each month.
Please do tune in then to WGGT-LP 92.9 FM in Philadelphia or live stream at gtownradio.com.

Not in Philly?
Gtown Radio has it's own ap! Listen anywhere any time.
Get Gtown Radio Ap here!

You can also listen to all the great G-town Radio programing on
Tunein , Simple Radio, or other aps on your phone or other device.

www.planetphiladelphia.com | www.gtownradio.com | facebook |  @planetphila | @gtownradio

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