Paris, it was discovered, is the noisiest city in Europe. It has 5.5 million people, while London or Berlin are much smaller, and this contributes to the noise level having become a public health issue. It interferes with people’s sleeping and in some cases with ordinary living such as talking or listening to music. As part of combating noise pollution a special program has installed noise radars that are capable of detecting the noise levels and identify of the vehicle it is coming from. For now the radars called “medusas” are only in the 17th and 20th arrondissements. Once the program goes into effect after 2023 each offender will be fined 135 euros, a fine automatically sent to their home. Much of the noise comes from scooters and motorcycles souped up to increase the sounds they make. It is estimated that one of these scooters can wake up as many as 10,000 people. The efforts are a continuation of the city fighting noise pollution. The first noise plan was in place from 2015 to 2020 and implemented measures such as sound barriers along the peripherique, the freeway that goes around the city or the testing of an innovative low noise asphalt. Not only are Parisians upset by the noise levels, the Word Health Organization attributes excessive noise, above 55 decibels, to a whole range of health issues, including cardio vascular problems. Also France’s National Noise Council has determined that excessive noise interferes with people’s sleep and productivity and costs the nation 147 billion euros each year. Other cities and other countries are watching France’s efforts in the hope of being able to import or adapt them. Anyone living in a large urban center can certainly appreciate the need to do something, anything about noise pollution.
May 2022
-
Animals With Legal Rights
In Ecuador individual wild animals now have legal rights. It’s the first country in the world to do so. And it follows because in 2008 Ecuador became the first country to recognize that nature or Pachamama, was an entity deserving rights. That law became part of the country’s constitution and yet it wasn’t clear whether wild animals were included. The new case has now settled that thanks to a woolly monkey named Estrellita. The monkey who had been illegally taken from the wild was kept as a pet by a librarian for 18 years. Owning wild animals is illegal in Ecuador and in 2019 Estrellita was taken from the librarian’s home and put in a zoo. A month later she died. The librarian did not know of the death and after Estrellita was seized sued to have the pet returned on the ground that her detention was illegal. What makes this story even more moving is that the court ruled in favor of the librarian, even if it was too late for Estrellita to be returned, but also ruled that the removal from her habitat in the first place had been a violation of her rights. In Ecuador this verdict raises the issue of animal rights to that of the highest law of the land, the level of constitution. In essence the court’s decision states that animals have rights protected by nature. This means that wild animals cannot be hunted, traded, fished, trafficked, captured, kept, collected, extracted, retained or exchanged. Following the example of Ecuador several countries now have granted legal protection to wild animals either through their courts or their constitution, countries like Columbia, Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, Panama. That is only a beginning, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know other countries will join in.
-
Vertical Agriculture
Control environment agriculture often called vertical agriculture is a form of urban farming that takes place in warehouses, not warehouses instead of acreage and fields, but warehouses full of drawers with plants and seedlings, stacked up to 30 feet or more. It’s a great answer to the environmental concerns of traditional agriculture but it is still new and still has kinks to work out. One great advantage is that it can be located near urban hubs and cut down on transportation costs, in fact some investors insist on that. It relies on LED technology for the needed light but that can sometimes be costly and there is so far only so much LED prices can be stretched and that may already have been reached. Some produce require more LED than others. Lettuce and herbs do well, but tomatoes require a lot more and so do strawberries. Another issue is, can what is being produced meet the increasing demand. It also requires a tech savvy workforce. And yet despite all this the field is thriving. It’s in Pennsylvania, New York, California, Georgia. What makes vertical farming great is the ability to grow food anywhere without consideration of climate. Every company has its own protocols which are well guarded which means that certain specifics about how each goes about it is not known. They guard their intellectual properties, growing system designs, materials and structure. By 2026 vertical farming is expected to grow worldwide to $9.7 billion business from a $3.1 billion one in 2021.
Vertical farming may be a growing business, and it may attract investors, but what’s attractive is not only being its ability to grow food in urban centers outside of traditional farming but also because it is an agricultural method that can transcend the constraints of climate—something that looks so promising.