14, 2017 photo, a rooftop is covered with solar panels at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York with the Manhattan skyline is at top. Read More: Taiwan Announces Ban on All Plastic Bags, Straws, and UtensilsĪll of this plastic is causing enormous harm to wildlife and potentially threatening human health by infiltrating the food and water we drink.īut a scientific breakthrough that came about by accident could change this dire development.Ī team of researchers in Japan inadvertently developed an enzyme that can break down plastic in a matter of days - far faster than the hundreds of years that plastic usually takes to decompose.ĭoing this “means we won’t need to dig up any more oil and, fundamentally, it should reduce the amount of plastic in the environment,” lead researcher, Professor John McGeehan of the University of Portsmouth, UK, told the Guardian. That’s 1.6 metric tons, or the size of midsize car, for every human on the planet. If current trends continue, 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste will exist in the world by 2050. His idea is by no means a solution to the accelerating threat of climate change, but it could slow the decline of the world’s coral populations. Read More: 5 Coral Reefs That Are Dying Around the World One engineer named Mo Ehsani wants to provide relief to coral with an underwater pipe that can pump cold water onto reefs, cooling them down and preventing a process known as coral bleaching. Read More: There Is a Climate Bomb Lurking Under Arctic Permafrost, Experts SayĬoral reefs are highly sensitive to heat increases, with two or three degree Celsius spikes posing an existential threat.Īnd as global warming intensifies, coral reefs around the world are dying wholesale. If successful, the satellite will be able to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by as much as 50%. That gas is methane and it traps up to 80 times as much heat as carbon.Ī team of scientists is trying to send a satellite into space that can pinpoint when and where methane leaks take place so they can be plugged sooner rather than later, according to the New York Times. The 650-foot blades would function like palm tree fronds by adapting to and bending with the speed and direction of wind, according to the New York Times.Īround the world, leaks from fracking and other activities can emit staggering amounts of an invisible and odorless gas for months at a time before being detected. One group of engineers is trying to get there by building wind turbines that are more than twice as large as the biggest turbines in use today. That’s the theory, now putting it into practice is the hard part. Read More: The UK Built Half of Europe's Offshore Wind Power in 2017 In fact, a team of researchers found that a wind farm the size of Greenland in the Atlantic Ocean could generate enough energy to power all of humanity, essentially eliminating the need for fossil fuels. Wind power is a largely underutilized resource. Mapping drones first determine the best planting strategy for a region, then planting drones hover six feet above the ground and fire seeds so fast that they get snugly implanted into the soil, according to National Geographic. UK-based company BioCarbon is using drones to spray tree seeds throughout ravaged forests and claim they can plant 1 billion trees per year. That’s why engineers across the world are coming up with high-tech solutions. Read More: 'Trump Forest' Hits a Million Trees in Bid to Curb Climate Change Planting seeds by hand always helps, but it’s hard for individuals to match the pace of industrial deforestation. Yet the world loses 18.3 million acres of forest each year, or 27 soccer fields worth of trees every minute, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Trees are essential for storing greenhouse gas emissions, filtering air and water, nourishing soil, providing food and shelter, and fostering ecosystems. Here are eight eventual or already-deployed innovations that are trying to prevent environmental ruin.
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