Future food shortages could be alleviated by encouraging the culinary use of edible insects, researchers argue in a new paper. 

Threats to food security from climate change and extreme weather can’t be met with expanded traditional livestock production, two researchers wrote in a Science “Perspectives” piece on Thursday. 

Insects can produce animal protein and other nutrients necessary to humans far faster and on less land than traditional agriculture, wrote co-authors Arup Kumar Hazarika and Unmilan Kalita, of India’s Cotton University and Barnagar College. 

These invertebrates also provide equivalent environmental benefits to lab-grown meat — but greatly reduced supply chain costs, the authors added. 

Meanwhile, insects have far more efficient feed-conversion ratios than birds and mammals — enabling them to turn more of the vegetable nutrition they consume into usable biomass. 

While more than 2,000 species of insects are edible and insects are widely consumed in Africa, Asia and Latin America, a significant “yuck” factor stands in the way of their introduction in North America, Hazarika and Kalita noted. 

But those who are willing to eat crickets and moths have access to a nutritional cornucopia inaccessible to pure vegetarians, the authors wrote. 

Dried house crickets are nearly two-thirds protein — beating out dried soybeans by nearly 50 percent, they noted.  

And yellow mealworms and the larvae of domestic silk moths and certain species of emperor moths “contain more protein by mass than does poultry or beef,” the authors added. 

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?

Today we’ll look at the fight over a supposed ban on gas stoves, followed by evidence of Exxon’s surprisingly prescient 1980s climate predictions. Then: a new American plan for wildfires, followed by why offshore wind had such a good year in 2022. 

Officials reject claims of gas stove ban

Both the White House and a key independent regulator have denied suggestions of a ban on new gas stoves, our colleague Rachel Frazin reported for The Hill.  

Tensions brewing: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre rejected support on Wednesday for such a ban, echoing earlier comments from the chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).  

• The remarks came after another commissioner had said that a ban was on the table, angering Republicans and moderate Democrats.  
  
• A recent study linking gas stoves to childhood asthma has been boosting support for restrictions.  

Conflicting messages: Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. had said last month that an impending CPSC information request could be “the first step in what could be a long journey toward regulating gas stoves,” Frazin reported at the time.  

Chairman denies intentions: But the chairman of the CPSC, a Biden appointee, said on Wednesday that he is not seeking to ban new gas stoves.

“I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so,” Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement.  

Opponents slam potential ban: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) described any such ban as “staggering overreach” and vowed to “investigate this and move to stop it.” 

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) stressed that “the federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner.”  

What’s so bad about gas stoves? They generate polluting methane and nitrous oxide — and release methane even when turned off, Stanford University scientists found last year. 

• Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide and was responsible for 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, Frazin reported.
    
• Nitrous oxide is responsible for 7 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.  
  
• Gas-fueled stovetops also may contain varying concentrations of cancer-causing volatile organic compounds, as we previously reported.  

Concerns about childhood asthma: A widely circulated December study demonstrated how gas stoves can exacerbate childhood asthma symptoms.  

The report, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that 12.7 percent of U.S. childhood asthma cases are attributable to gas stove use. 

Current global heating levels predicted in 1970s 

Scientists at oil giant ExxonMobil accurately forecasted present-day climate change as long ago as the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new study has found. 

The findings by Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are “the nail-in-the-coffin of ExxonMobil’s claims that it has been falsely accused of climate malfeasance,” lead author Geoffrey Supran, a research associate at Harvard, said in a statement. 

Surprising accuracy: The majority of the company’s internal climate predictions prepared during that period — between 63 and 83 percent of Exxon’s files — have closely matched actual global warming, according to the paper, published on Thursday in Environmental Research Letters. 

• “We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming consistent with subsequent observations,” the report stated.  
  
• The research drew on internal and public papers produced by ExxonMobil scientists between 1977 and 2014. 

Beating the Feds: In some cases, that research was better quality than far more influential studies by government scientists, according to the study.  

• To draw their conclusions, the Harvard and Potsdam researchers analyzed Exxon’s predictive “skill scores,” or how their predictions matched what actually happened. 
  
• They found that Exxon scientists were producing climate research with an average skill score of 75 percent. 
  
• In comparison, when NASA scientist James Hansen presented his global warming predictions to Congress in 1988 — helping launch the modern climate movement — his studies matched subsequent warming by up to 66 percent. 

Spreading skepticism: In the 1990s, the oil giant turned away from funding climate science and pivoted to a campaign to sow broad-based doubt over the quality of those findings. 

“The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,” said one Exxon ad, addressing proposals in the late 1990s for the U.S. to join an international climate accord at the time.  

Exxon responds: In a statement to Equilibrium, Exxon spokesperson Todd Spitler characterized the report as part of a broader campaign by the companies’ critics to portray “well intended, internal policy debates as an attempted company disinformation campaign.” 

• In recent years Exxon has sought to cast itself as an enthusiastic partner in the campaign to keep global temperatures from rising below dangerous levels.  
  
• The company “is committed to being part of the solution to climate change and the risks it poses,” Spitler added.

Click here for the full story. 

US cities unprepared to face new age of fire: feds 

The federal government is calling for an intensive training regimen to help American firefighters confront a new era of climate change-fueled fires in the country’s growing suburbs and exurbs.

• The expanding fringe where cities merge into wildlands is becoming the site of a new form of American wildfire, U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) director Lori Moore-Merrell warned. 
  
• This zone is called the wildland-urban interface, or WUI.

Death toll: “In the last year, we lost nearly 2500 lives to fire — including 276 children and 96 firefighters,” Moore-Merrell said.  

• Emerging trends in destructive fire — particularly the kind that now stalks the edges of American cities — are increasing the future risk, she added. 
  
• “It is important to note that 99 million people — or a third of the U.S. population — now live in the wildland urban interface environment,” Moore-Merrell said at a press conference in New York on Tuesday.

But most of those people — and the firefighters who have to put out their fires — “have no idea what [the WUI] is or the dangers that poses,” Moore-Merrell said at an event premiering the administration’s new Fire Service National Strategy. 

For more on why the WUI is under threat — and how that is compounding other risks to American firefighters and the cities they protect — please click here. 

Offshore wind strong in 2022, challenges lie ahead

The U.S. offshore wind sector had a strong end to 2022 but is bracing for multiple economic challenges ahead, according to a new market survey. 

Good and bad: The least three months of the year were particularly successful due to key port investments and the first-ever federal offshore wind auction on the West Coast, the Business Network for Offshore Wind found in its 2022 fourth quarter report. 

Nonetheless, a combination of supply chain bottlenecks and surging commodity prices could impede further progress this year, the nonprofit warned. 

Overcoming speed bumps: “The U.S. offshore wind industry remains on solid footing, even with the speed bumps and setbacks we saw emerging at the end of 2022,” Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the network, said in a statement. 

Wins for wind: Among the biggest 2022 achievements identified by the group was California’s wind auction, in which the federal government leased a total of 4.6 gigawatts for $757.1 million after two days of fierce bidding.  

• This future offshore wind capacity will be enough to power more than 1.5 million homes, according to the Department of the Interior. 
  
• The five developers that won bids all have projects under development on the East Coast, the nonprofit group noted in the quarterly survey.  

A year of growth: Another accomplishment cited in the report was a domestic supply chain “buttressed by key growth” in the steel sector.  

Also important were major port investments in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, according to the survey. 

Economic effects: Nonetheless, the report also cautioned that inflationary conditions disrupting European offshore wind have “finally reached U.S. shores, resulting in project delays.”  

The first such delays hit the Massachusetts shoreline in October, the survey said. 

Looking ahead: At the same time, however, the authors also pinpointed the Gulf of Mexico as a region with immense offshore wind potential. 

• The area could generate nearly 9 gigawatts of offshore wind — or enough to power nearly 3 million homes. 
  
• The federal government has designated two wind energy zones off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana — the final step before officially auctioning lease areas in mid-2023. 

To read the full story, please click here. 

Thursday Threats

A Himalayan community in India has started sinking, computing systems for autonomous vehicles generate massive emissions and Ukraine war causes more environmental damage. 

Himalayan town is sinking amid ‘unchecked development’ 

• The town of Joshimath, India, is starting to sink, as large crevices in the area have sent muddy water gushing out of the ground, The Washington Post reported. Joshimath is what the Post described as “the latest casualty of the Himalayan region, where unchecked development is colliding with climate change and frequent natural disasters.” 

Computers that run self-driving cars could increase global emissions 

• The energy required to run computers in a future global fleet of autonomous vehicles could produce as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the data centers in the world, according to a new study in IEEE Micro. MIT researchers found that 1 billion such cars, each driving for an hour daily, would use enough energy to generate the same amount of emissions that data centers do today. 

Environmental costs of Ukraine war continue to mount 

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a wide range of far-reaching negative impacts to global environmental causes, ranging from impacts on global energy, food and fertilizer markets to disruptions in the supply of metals needed for the energy transition, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for more and check out other newsletters here. We’ll see you tomorrow.