Equilibrium/Sustainability — Worm farms, thin bottles key to carbon-neutral wine 

The keys to creating a carbon-neutral winery may lie in the regenerative power of wastewater recycling worms and a switch to lighter wine bottles, The Washington Post reported. 

The biggest carbon cost of wine production is the production and shipping of bottles, according to the wine company Bonterra, which the Post described as “the first nationally distributed wine brand to achieve Climate Neutral certification.” 

Bonterra, one of multiple brands owned by Fetzer Vineyards in Hopland, Calif., found that more than a third of the label’s emissions came from packaging and materials, while another quarter came from shipping, the Post reported. This reality led the company to switch to lighter bottles, followed by a series of other eco-conscious decisions. 

Because farming also played a significant role in Bonterra’s sustainability quest, the company began composting vineyard waste and integrated a worm farm to process winery water so that it could be reused, the newspaper reported.  

Even with these practices, the company found that a bottle of their rosé “costs” about 3.4 pounds of carbon dioxide — as much as three apples, or 2.5 percent of the average smartphone. Therefore, it’s countering such costs with voluntary carbon offsets.  
 
“We are in the midst of a revolution, with consumers awakening to the reality of the climate crisis and recognizing that we need to shift the way we think about the world, business and the items we purchase,” Jess Baum, Bonterra’s sustainability director, told the Post. 

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.

Today we’ll take a trip across the country to New York, where drivers will be getting a welcome tax holiday amid high prices at the pump. Then it’s back to California for a look at how the drought there is affecting the cannabis business and why that’s a bad sign ahead of the summer.  

New Yorkers to get gas tax holiday 

New Yorkers will be getting significant relief from soaring prices at the pump, with a suspension of the state’s gas tax from June through the end of the year, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced on Thursday. 

Hochul delivered the news during a press conference focusing on her $220 billion state budget, the terms of which had been under debate with state legislative leaders since she submitted her proposal in January. 

Confirming that she and her colleagues had come to an agreement, Hochul declared the forthcoming gas tax holiday within the first few minutes of her hour-long address. 

Putting money back in people’s pockets: “We understand the necessity of stopping Russian oil from coming into our reserves,” the governor said. “And I applaud everything President Biden has done to show that we are willing to stand with the Ukrainian people, as they are under assault by a war criminal.” 

“But now we have to look at our people, where they are, and meet them where they are right now, at this time of great stress,” she continued. “This budget will put more money back in people’s pockets.” 

How much money? The gas tax suspension is equivalent to about 16 cents per gallon and will result in a total of about $585 million in relief for families and businesses across New York, according to Hochul. 

Tackling rising fuel prices, she explained, is part of a statewide search as to “what we can do to give people just a break.” 

Potential for “cumulative” impact: Hochul also said that she is conducting ongoing conversations with individual counties to ask them to consider doing the same to pause their local-level gas taxes. 

“The cumulative effect is very impactful for people as they go to the pump and have that sense of stress in their chest, when they think about the cost of the gas as they try to figure out if they’re going to be able to afford it for the day,” the governor said. 

WHAT MADE THE CUT — AND WHAT DIDN’T 

A variety of other climate and sustainability measures are set to remain in the negotiated budget, such as a $4.2 billion landmark “Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act,” which includes $1 billion in new funds on top of last year’s $3 billion, Hochul confirmed. 

Along with these investments are an additional $400 million to the state’s environmental protection fund — to support climate change mitigation projects — as well as investments in the state’s green energy economy that are set to create 10,000 new jobs, according to the governor. 

Transportation upgrades were key: Also included in the budget is a $500 million investment in offshore wind development, as well as a $32.8 billion investment in a five-year transportation infrastructure plan, Hochul explained. 

One key transportation commitment in the budget involves a plan to make the state’s fleet of 50,000 school buses 100 percent electric by 2035, while all new school bus purchases will need to be zero-emission vehicles by 2027. 

The electric bus mandate will receive $500 million in funding under the Environmental Bond Act, as first reported by Politico. 

Building electrification will have to wait: One sustainability measure initially included in Hochul’s budget proposal that didn’t make it through negotiations was a measure to electrify all newly constructed buildings and prohibit oil and gas hookups in these structures. 

Getting over the finish line: In response to a reporter’s question about this item’s removal, Hochul referred back to “the additional billion dollars” that she put into the Environmental Bond Act, while stressing the importance of ensuring that the budget “gets over the finish line.” 

“We’re going to roll up our sleeves between now and the end of session and work to achieve some of the issues that are still important to people,” she said. 

To read the full story, please click here. 

California drought puts cannabis farms in peril

California’s licensed cannabis farmers are buckling under a perfect storm of plunging prices, supply chain disruptions, and hovering over all of it, the crushing drought.  

These cultivators are early victims of what is setting up to be a hard summer for growers.  

 
The drought and the impending heat have inland California bracing for another bad wildfire season, according to the Redding Record-Searchlight. Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Agency is foreseeing hydropower shortages, CBS reported. 
  

And looming over all that is a rising tide of property damage and preventable death, according to a new series of studies commissioned by the state legislature. 

Cannabis farmers are getting trimmed: Hundreds of farmers have opted to let their expensive licenses lapse, caught between prices busted by years of overproduction, rising supply costs and the drought, cannabis trade publication MJBizDaily reported. 

Karla Knapek of Honeydew Farms told MJBizDaily she’s letting four of her farms go fallow due to “lack of funds and lack of water.” Mark Shaffer, another grower, said he’s sharing his license and costs with a nearby farm, but he isn’t optimistic about the yeild. 
 

“This is going to be the biggest extinction event of cannabis that we’ve seen, and it’s unavoidable,” Shaffer said. 
 

The drought is already historic. The snowpack is at just 16 percent of its historic average in the Scott River watershed in the state’s mountainous north, the Redding Record-Searchlight reported.  

It’s at 4 percent of its historic average in Philips, Calif., near the Nevada border, and just 38 percent of the historic average statewide, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

That means it’s already a bad fire year: California has had 925 wildfires this year between Jan 1 and April 1, the Record-Searchlight reported. 

While that’s about as many as last year, this year’s fires which were driven by high winds and sucked in by dry vegetation. 

FAILING RAINS MEAN A HARD SUMMER FOR CALIFORNIA 

The most alarming part of the drought is that it isn’t likely to get any better this year, according to a consensus among meteorologists.  

 
California’s wet season generally runs from October through March, with April 1 representing the usual beginning of the state’s summer, according to the Chronicle. 

This year the rains failed. Only December brought significant rain. In January, an atmospheric river was blocked by an offshore atmospheric ridge pushing incoming storms away from the state, the Chronicle reported. 
 

Summer is just around the corner and California is now likely past the “point of no return” for further significant rainfall, according to ABC 10. 
 

Drought is altering California’s lands: Extended droughts are dangerous to agriculture because some kinds of soil “will dry out and almost lose its ability to retain water,” Andrew Schwartz of UC Berkeley told KPBS. 

For other types of soils, heat makes them “actually pull up so much of the water from any new rainfall that it doesn’t make it into streams and then our reservoirs,” Schwartz added, describing such drought conditions as “self-perpetuating.” 

A thirsty West: The air above the West is also now far “thirstier” than the average of the past 20 to 40 years, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.  

“Atmospheric thirst is a persistent force in pushing Western landscapes and water supplies toward drought,” lead author Christine Albano said in a statement. 

Such thirstiness also means that crops need more water than in the past, said coauthor Dan McEvoy in a statement. 
 

This is only the beginning: Even in the best case scenario, the state faces a broad uptick in heat, drought and sea-level rise, which will cause a variety of disruptions to California life, according to a series of reports commissioned by the California legislature. 

Some such disruptions include surges in the number of deaths from heat or particulate inhalation, decreased ability of unairconditioned or fire-disrupted schools to provide classes or free lunches and the security of the state’s housing stock, according to San Jose Inside. 

State Democrat sees “all hands” opportunity: These alarming reports help put added weight behind pushes for California to do more on climate, State Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D) told Inside. 

The findings turn “the climate conversation into an all-hands-on-deck versus, ‘Oh, this is just some tree hugger over here,’” Wieckowski added. 

Follow-up Friday

Germany could end reliance on Russian energy this winter: Berlin think tank 

• Some E.U. countries, like Germany, are dependent on Russian gas and struggling to turn off the tap. On Friday, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) think tank said that Germany could cut its reliance on Russian energy by this winter, German broadcaster DW reported. 

Air pollution to blame for 180,000 excess deaths in tropical cities: study 

• Tumble drying a load of laundry may release harmful microfibers into the air, according to a study in PLOS One. On Friday, researchers published alarming air pollution findings in Science Advances, indicating that such contamination is likely responsible for 180,000 excess deaths in tropical cities — resulting from emerging industries and residential traffic, waste burning and use of charcoal and fuelwood. 

Current subsidy regimes for electric vehicles aren’t cutting emissions: study 

• Rising gas prices have pushed up sales for electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla. On Thursday a study from Harvard Law found that in their current forms, EV subsidies — which Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long opposed — have failed to reduce carbon emissions. 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you on Monday.

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