Day: April 22, 2020💾

📽️ Videos

NPR

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Why The World Is Still Pumping So Much Oil Even As Demand Drops Away : NPR

With the global economy in a pandemic-induced coma, the world just doesn't need a lot of oil.

But oil is still flowing out of wells, and with nowhere else to go, it's filling up the world's storage tanks. The oversupply is so intense that this week U.S. oil prices briefly went negative.

But why is that oil still flowing, anyway? Why don't producers turn off the spigot when demand falls?

The short answer is that production is decreasing — just not fast enough.

No, the Pandemic Isn’t an Excuse to Go Back to Single-Use Plastics | Opinion

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No, the Pandemic Isn’t an Excuse to Go Back to Single-Use Plastics | Opinion

ecause of coronavirus, events planned for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day were cancelled, or moved online. At least while lockdown orders last, the pandemic is transforming behavior and environmental impacts—but not across the board. Some industries are cynically exploiting it to push for rollbacks and greater license to pollute.

The plastics industry is a case in point. It's intertwined with the fossil fuel industry, since petrochemical byproducts of fossil fuel production are the feedstocks for plastics. As demand for fracked gas declines, the two industries have been working to channel overproduction into producing more plastic, and they're playing the angles to stoke demand.

Why getting the U.S. back to normal in the next couple months is a ‘fantasy’ | PBS NewsHour

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Why getting the U.S. back to normal in the next couple months is a ‘fantasy’ | PBS NewsHour

As the novel coronavirus pandemic wears on, debate is brewing over how long the associated shutdowns should last. The New York Times’ Donald McNeil has covered epidemics for close to two decades and reported recently on why American society could continue to be disrupted by COVID-19 for the next two years. He joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the epidemiological and medical realities of COVID-19.
Map: Severence Hill Trail