| | | | | Welcome! Today, pillow-top cabins and "plastic smog" in the ocean. But first, drivers rebel. | |  | | You may have a sense gas guzzlers are on the way out. Americans have been driving less. Younger ones are ditching their cars altogether, saying they would rather "call an Uber or 911." London, Singapore and perhaps even New York are embracing congestion charges. Some countries and jurisdictions are even banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles. Deadlines draw near in Norway (2025), the United Kingdom (2030), California (2035) and the European Union (2035). | | But cars, and their drivers, are not going quietly. In the most recent roadblock, Germany refused to sign off on the E.U.'s ban, which it had already agreed upon. The reason: German politicians want new internal combustion engine cars that run on "e-fuel," a synthetic liquid fuel made with electricity, to remain legal. While potentially carbon-free, it's a far less efficient way to use electricity than battery-powered vehicles. Italy, Poland and Bulgaria may follow. That has thrown the continent's target of carbon neutrality by 2050 into question. | | Then there's the small but growing rebellion against the "15-minute city": a setup in which everything you need in your daily life, from groceries to haircuts to recreation, is available within a 15-minute trip on foot, by bicycle or via mass transit. Before the 1950s, this was not controversial — it was just life. But experiments with the concept in cities from Barcelona to Brussels to Oxford have been met with death threats, police attacks and comparisons to prisons or concentration camps. "For these people, restricting the role of the car in cities is cutting their civil rights," urbanist Carlos Moreno, who is credited for the 15-minute concept, told Yahoo News. "This is crazy." | | Will these efforts succeed? I just had a front-row seat to one such attempt in San Francisco. After decades of lobbying, the city closed a main road through Golden Gate Park last year. Since then, there have been 7 million visits to the car-free promenade. Bands play, people roller skate and families stroll. But opponents mobilized a vote to overturn the city's decision. When the ballot measure came up in November, it was defeated by 61 percent of voters. | |  | | Humans have filled the world's oceans with more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic, according to a major study released Wednesday. That's roughly 21,000 pieces per person on Earth. This "plastic smog" is doubling in size about every six years, researchers found. | | | The study should inject new urgency into ongoing U.N. talks to curb plastic trash. "The plastic pollution, it's in every biome," said Marcus Erikson, the study's lead researcher. "It's not just in oceans anymore." | | | Californians are calling this the miracle winter. After enduring its worst drought in 1,200 years, California has more water than it has seen in decades. Only 3 percent of the state remains in extreme drought, compared to more than one-third last year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Yet another "atmospheric river" will dump snow and rain on the Sierra Nevada mountain range this weekend, much of it already buried under 200 percent of normal snowpack. Below, the snow piles up in Lake Tahoe, just a few hours from San Francisco. | | | Climate news amounted to just 1.3 percent of overall broadcast time in the United States last year. But that's four times more than in 2020. Corporate broadcasters ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox produced a record 23 hours of climate coverage last year. That's the highest number since Media Matters for America started tracking it in 2011. | | | Global extreme weather led the coverage, appearing in 41 percent of segments, followed by infrastructure, electricity grids and water. | | | The Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter limits on dumping toxic waste from power plants into waterways. The rule would require plants to filter toxic metals such as arsenic, mercury and selenium from their wastewater before releasing it into rivers, lakes and streams. | | | From elsewhere: Despite 190 countries signing the U.N. High Seas treaty to protect marine biodiversity last week, sea life still faces myriad risks like the ocean-spanning Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, reports the Guardian. A study found hazardous "forever chemicals" in toilet paper across four continents. TP is not alone, Bloomberg reports: "PFAS are ubiquitous in so many consumer products." | |  | | Thanks for all your recipes last week. Alfred's great-grandmother handed down this one: "1 pound of lentils, one full bulb of garlic, one large sweet Vidalia onion, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, 3/4 of a cup extra-virgin olive oil. Add olive oil and stir gently until well blended. Enjoy as is, or add small [pasta] shells … I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my family has … 🙂" | | I read all your emails. Be part of the Climate Coach community. Write in about your personal encounters with car culture, photos that reflect our changing climate and what you'd like to see in the newsletter at climatecoach@washpost.com. | | See you next Tuesday, Michael Coren, Climate Coach | | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Climate Coach in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday. | | | | | | | | | |
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