PBS Terra shows 'We Saw What AI Data Centers Don't Want You to See'

Today's brief educational entry I can share in June features Overview on PBS Terra showing We Saw What AI Data Centers Don't Want You to See.

We investigated one of the world’s largest AI data centers, using thermal drone footage to reveal the hidden pollution powering the AI boom. As companies race to build the future of artificial intelligence, residents and experts warn that fossil fuels, secrecy, and weak regulation may be putting communities at risk.

I reproduced my usual warning about AI in TODAY reveals TIME's people of the year for 2025.

I'm repeating what I wrote about the Economics Nobel Prize in Science, peace, economics, and literature winners for Nobel Prize Day 2025.

This award is as much about technology as it is about economics. May it mean that AI be a net benefit for the economy. Right now, it looks like it's doing more destruction than creation.

If the projections are correct, it will be doing both, with 20% of people losing their current jobs while quintupling GDP. Yikes! That's an outcome the residents of Richistan would approve of. As for the rest of us, I'll repeat what I wrote a dozen years ago in Robots are coming for our jobs, "the loss of jobs to robots will be the major effect of the Singularity, not everyone becoming cyborgs or the machines enslaving or killing off humanity." It's not like we weren't warned.

That would be an end result. Joe Hanson is showing that getting there is already a risk in terms of increased consumption of land, water, materials to make the data centers and the power plants to run them, and natural gas, as well as increased production of waste in the form of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. It reminds me of an equation I teach my environmental science students to describe environmental impact: "I=P*A*T, where I is impact, P is population, A is affluence, and T is technology." A.I., or at least the data centers to support it, are becoming an example of a technology that supports affluence but increases the impact of the population on the environment. I prefer technology that decreases the impact of an affluent population by being more efficient. Data centers aren't that, not until they use sustainable energy.

Overview's video is a follow-up to Floodlight News reporting We Caught Elon Musk’s AI Company Defying Federal Law two months ago.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is fueling its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage captured in late January 2026 shows xAI running the unpermitted turbines at its custom-built power plant in Southaven, Miss., nearly two weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency reiterated that doing so requires a state permit in advance. The ad hoc gas plant's sole task is to power the data center behind Grok and an example of AI's growing reliance on fossil fuels. Investigative Producer Evan Simon breaks down the investigation and what the findings could mean for the AI buildout occurring across the country.

**UPDATE** Mississippi regulators approved xAI's permit application to run 41 gas powered turbines at its Southaven gas plant on 3/10/26. The decision comes despite heavy pushback from local community members and will result in the creation of one of Mississippi's largest fossil fuel power plants.

This got me to subscribe to the Floodlight News YouTube channel, "The only U.S. newsroom with the specific mission to investigate climate polluters." Expect to see more from them.

Another lesson I teach my students is about the principles for environmental policy. Two of them are human rights, in this case the right to clean air and an environment not permeated by harmful noise, and public participation. The United States is supposed to be a democracy within a republic, where the people decide and the government represents the people. The Floodlight News video shows that the way data centers are being installed and operated respects neither. That's also the point of yesterday's MS NOW video, Erin Brockovich on AI data centers: 'People aren't being heard'.

Americans on both sides of the aisle have found common ground opposing construction of AI data centers in their communities. In Texas, one lifelong conservative voter told MSNOW reporter Josh Einiger that the issue could flip the Senate. And longtime consumer advocate Erin Brockovich joins to lay out what she's learned since she started tracking the issue.

I'm surprised I've never mentioned Erin Brockovich in 15+ years of blogging. It's about time I did.

That's a wrap for today. I'm sure I'll have more to say on the matter. In the meantime, stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment feature.

Shane Campbell-Staton says 'I Visited America's Poison Sea' for Wayback Wednesday

Happy Wayback Wednesday! I'm kicking off today's retrospective with Human Footprint on PBS Terra's I Visited America's Poison Sea.

Why does America have a toxic sea… and how did it get there?

The Salton Sea was once one of California’s most vibrant tourist hotspots, a beach teeming with visitors and wildlife. Today it’s a shrinking, toxic lake at the center of a water crisis impacting 40 million people across the Southwest. What happened?

Shane Campbell-Staton visits the Imperial Valley to examine how a desert transformed into America’s vegetable garden, but at serious environmental and social costs. He meets Alex Jack, a third-generation farmer pioneering water-saving techniques to sustain his family’s farm, and Luis Olmedo, a community advocate fighting for the health and rights of migrant workers who harvest the valley’s crops.

The story of the Salton Sea reveals the harsh realities of scarce water, toxic pollution, and a system that doesn’t protect everyone equally. As new water regulations for the Colorado River loom in 2026, this pivotal moment demands a fresh approach to who controls this precious resource, and how it can be allocated more fairly.

I'm old enough to remember when the Salton Sea was the aquatic playground shown in the video and I find it sad that it is now too polluted to still be that. It's now become a place that fits what I wrote in John Oliver examines the UK elections: "One of my favorite sayings that I tell my students is 'no one, or in this case, no place, is completely useless; it can always be used as a bad example.'" It also serves as an example of three of Commoner's Laws, "Everything must go somewhere (There is no away)" for agricultural runoff, "There is no free lunch" for growing winter vegetables, and "Everything is connected to everything else" for water use. "Nature knows best?" We should be so lucky.

Follow over the jump for most read posts featuring clips from Human Footprint during the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

Hank Green explains why 'Coal is Extremely Dumb'

I wrote, "I really don't like coal" but didn't explain why last week. Hank Green explains for me in Coal is Extremely Dumb.

It feels kinda silly to make this video but there are still people super focused on coal and it just feels like they haven't listened to any of the people who know exactly why coal is just not going to be a part of our future power mix, and why that actually has nothing to do with the environment.

I had a feeling "people super focused on coal" referred to Donald "Hoover Harding Cleveland" Trump, who is choosing an old technology, coal and other fossil fuels, over a newer one, renewables. Hank confirmed it at 11:24 when he showed an executive order of Hoover Harding Cleveland's, then talked about how people who still support coal believe anything that is different from the way things were in 1985 is "woke," making his rant a twenty-minute subtweet. I'm more than OK with that.

Rant or not, I learned a lot from Hank, including about combined-cycle power plants, lead being in coal exhaust along with mercury and radioactive materials, and this graph, which I can show to my students.


Welcome to blogging as professional development.

That's a wrap for today. Stay tuned for the Vernal Equinox, the last post of the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

SciShow asks 'What Will Humanity Leave Behind?'

This was originally "A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse," and I haven't changed that description even as my focus has changed since 2011. I'm returning to the original theme as I feature SciShow asking What Will Humanity Leave Behind?

When humans are gone, nature will reclaim our cities and break down much of what we've built. But some of the things we've made will last much longer than others, and they're probably not the things you'd expect.

I used to work with zebra mussels, so I'm surprised I've only mentioned them once here and that was a dozen years ago. It was about time I mentioned the invasive species again and what it's done to the Great Lakes ecosystem. That counts as a sign of human presence, because the bivalves wouldn't be in North America without human assistance.

While I'm not surprised that glass and ceramics will last millions of years — one of the stories I tell my students is about quartz grains being eroded and redeposited a dozen times over a billion years, and glass is made from quartz — finding out that bronze survives for thousands of years is something that I should have realized long ago. After all, the Bronze Age in Europe ended nearly 3,000 years ago, and the bronze artifacts from then have survived all that time.

Something else I expected as a sign of human presence was plastic. Hank Green didn't list that, but he did discuss spheroidal carbonaceous particles. So there is something special about the soot we produce from burning fossil fuels!

That's a wrap for today's collapse-themed entry. Stay tuned as I return to entertainment tomorrow.

SciShow explains 'How to Make a Warning Last 10,000 Years'

SciShow has been uploading videos about nuclear waste lately, the most recent of which explains How to Make a Warning Last 10,000 Years.

In the southeast corner of New Mexico, the United States is burying decades of nuclear waste. The storage site, and the earth above it, will remain lethal for millennia...perhaps as much as 300,000 years! How can we warn people that far in the future to "Keep Out!"?

It's time to be a good environmentalist and recycle.

As I point out to my students, the worst aspect of nuclear power isn’t the risk of meltdown, as in Fukushima. Very few plants melt down. All of them, however, produce radioactive waste, which is dangerous for thousands of years. Dealing with that is the big issue.

I reinforce that point with the Seeker video I embedded in Nuclear waste in cat litter, which is where I first heard about WIPP. I'm relieved to see that the Department of Energy is thinking ahead to its closure and how to protect people for millennia to come.

Working backwards, the next most recent SciShow video on this topic is So You Need To Dispose Of Some Nuclear Waste…

We all have to deal with getting rid of trash. But what do we do when that trash is radioactive? Here's a few of the weirdest solutions to the green glowy problem of storing radioactive waste for decades to come.

If this video were shorter, I'd gladly show it to my students. Instead, I'm planning on passing on the highlights the next time I lecture on nuclear power, which will be this December. May I remember it that long.

I close with the earliest of the three videos from the past few months, This Gorgeous Gemstone Traps Nuclear Waste.

This month's Rocks Box is the perfect combo of beauty and brains. Sodalite is a gorgeous blue mineral that has a superpower - its tiny pores can trap all kinds of molecules, making it the perfect sieve for everything from industrial practices to cleaning up pollution. And this month's Rocks Box subscribers get their own!

I had no idea zeolites like sodalite were so useful. Any day I learn something new is a good day, so today is already a good day.

That's a wrap for today's Commoner's Laws lessons about pollution, "Everything must go somewhere (There is no away)" and "There is no free lunch" about the problem and "Nature knows best" for the solutions. Stay tuned for a driving update, since Pearl will actually pass 70,000 miles today.

Colbert, Lydic, and Meyers take closer looks at the EPA and Epstein and Kimmel goes down the rabbit hole on 'windmills'

I'm covering the Outstanding Talk Series Emmy nominees today, but first I'm featuring their monologues, beginning with Stephen Colbert's EPA Stops Protecting The Environment | Americans Need To Have More Sex | Don Jr.: My Dad Is So Hot.

The EPA is seeking to scrap limits on greenhouse gas emissions, America’s fertility rate hit an all-time low, and the president’s son weighed in on the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle eugenics controversy.

I thought Scott Pruitt, Andrew Wheeler, and Rick Perry during Donald "Hoover Cleveland" Trump's first term were bad enough. They didn't have Project 2025 to misguide them. Ah, the gift that keeps on giving for the EPA Chief Lee Zeldin, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Hoover Cleveland himself, and others who are living down to their reputations as "air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fools." It's not like the BBC, MSNBC, CityNerd, and I didn't tell you so.

I'll get back to the proposed EPA policy change when I embed the other nominees. In the meantime, I was wondering if I would need to update Listening to people worry about lower birthrates on World Population Day is enough to drive me to drink on National Mojito Day. Stephen did it for me. He also connected it to Sydney Sweeney's ad, although I think she and American Eagle are just channeling Brooke Shields.

Desi Lydic also examined the EPA decision in Trump Asks Hegseth to Cool It With the Polygraphs & Kristi Noem Goes Horse Girl | The Daily Show.

In another installment of The Worst Wing, Desi Lydic tackles Lee Zeldin telling everyone in the EPA to be more chill about climate change, Marco Rubio lighting a birth control bonfire, and Kristi Noem finding another animal to scare. Plus, Pete Hegseth's got a new addiction: polygraph testing Pentagon insiders to see who's talked sh*t about him.

This was indeed a bad week to stop regulating greenhouse gases. Between that, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and Pete Hegseth, it's "The Worst Wing," indeed.

The Daily Show won Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming (Segment) and has two nominations in the category this year, so I'm embedding Joe Rogan: The Path to Roganlightenment as a bonus.

From his humble beginnings in Newark to his scrappy days in Boston, Joe Rogan has always pushed his brains to the limit. Rogan's stand-up comedy led him to a career in television, eventually inspiring him to start his own podcast where he could ask the really important questions, like, "Wouldn't it be crazy if a wolf wore a fedora?" This is The Daily Showography of Joe Rogan.

This is who Spotify chose over Niel Young and is the leading podcaster? Nora Ephron was right when she wrote "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," even though she attributed it to H.L. Mencken.

This wouldn't be a closer look without Seth Meyers, so I'm sharing Trump "Haunted" by Epstein Questions, Says Epstein “Stole” Spa Staff as Polls Crater: A Closer Look.

Seth takes a closer look at Trump returning to the U.S. after his Scotland trip that was supposed to be a personal business trip and golf vacation that ended up being mostly about how he never had the "privilege" of going to Jeffrey Epstein's private island.

My wife and I watched this and our reaction was that none of this made him look good; he just displayed his worst side.

Jimmy Kimmel wasn't on last night, but his show earned a nomination for Outstanding Talk Series, so I'm embedding The Rabbit Hole with Jimmy Kimmel: Windmills, itself an Emmy nominee.

Jimmy Kimmel falls down the Rabbit Hole with an investigation that will blow you away about the dangers of windmills and Donald Trump’s sworn enemy: The Wind.

That's as close as I can get to Kimmel on energy and climate change.

Follow over the jump for The Daily Show's nine Emmy nominations at the Primetime Emmy Awards and Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Howtown explains 'How half the US lost part of their minds'

I slept in today and have an appointment this afternoon, so I'm postponing the entry about the nominees for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards I've already created a preview image for. In its place, I'm sharing Howtown explaining How half the US lost part of their minds.

Leaded gasoline, paint, and pipes left a toxic fingerprint in the baby teeth of half of all Americans — and those tiny clues reveal how silent doses of lead rewired IQ scores, crime rates, and mental health for decades. In this Howtown episode we laser-scan my own baby teeth with “tooth detective” Manish Arora, revisit Herbert Needleman’s 1970s Boston study, and track economist Jessica Reyes’s state-by-state link between tetraethyl lead’s phase-out and the 1990s crime drop. New data from New Zealand’s Dunedin Study (analyzed by Aaron Reuben) show how early exposure still shapes Gen X brains, personalities, and social mobility, framing one of the largest environmental injustices in U.S. history.

I suspected this video would be about lead and I was right; it's too early for it to be about the pandemic, although COVID-19 causes brain damage. My wife and I are lucky to have suffered nothing more severe than "modestly lower energy levels and some slight brain fog" that cleared up after a little over a year.

The story Adam Cole and Joss Fong told complements the one related in SciShow explains the connection between the age of the Earth and unleaded gasoline plus more about lead with more of an emphasis on how lead affected and still affects public health, long after the U.S. and other countries stopped using leaded gasoline and lead paint. I had no idea how persistent the effects of lead exposure were and still are, including loss of IQ points through adulthood. I also learned how and why lead is so dangerous; it imitates calcium because its ions have the same charge (valence) and nearly the same size, so it gets incorporated in bones and teeth and interferes with nerve function. As I'm fond of writing, it's a good day when I learn something new and I learned a lot of new information from this video.

Speaking of learning new things, I'm trying to figure out when I might show this to my students. Since my students and I live in Michigan, home of the Flint Water Crisis, which Cole and Fong mention, I could show it when I lecture about water pollution. The video concentrates on leaded gasoline, which is an air pollution problem, so it would make more sense to show it then, especially since I talk about the health effects of air pollution. Besides, that part of the story focuses on the role Charles F. Kettering, who worked for General Motors, played in developing leaded gasoline. That's also a Michigan story. Either way, if I show this video, it will become another example of blogging as professional development.

That's a wrap for today's evergreen environmental topic. Stay tuned to see if I resume my Emmy Awards coverage tomorrow, or postpone it again.

PBS Terra exclaims 'Wait...The Worst Possible US Disaster Just Got EVEN WORSE?!?'

The 4th of July is over and my blog has already passed its monthly page view goal, so it's time to write about topics worth sharing in August. Fortunately, PBS Terra's most recent video fits the bill, Wait...The Worst Possible US Disaster Just Got EVEN WORSE?!? (Cascadia Megaquake).

The Big One is coming and it could be far worse than anyone imagined.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone, just off the Pacific Northwest coast, is building toward a massive earthquake and tsunami. But new research reveals an even more terrifying possibility: widespread toxic spills, infrastructure collapse, wildfires, and deadly gas plumes. All triggered by a single seismic event.

In this episode of Weathered, we dig into the science behind the Cascadia Megaquake, why the Pacific Northwest is especially vulnerable, and how climate change could make it worse. We explore what you can do to stay safe and why your community might be your best line of defense.

This video is the latest in a series that began with PBS examines the risks from a major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest and continued with PBS Terra explains 'Here's EXACTLY What to Do When the Next Megaquake Hits: Cascadia Subduction Zone', PBS Terra asks 'What's the ONE THING You Can Do To Survive a Tsunami?', and PBS Terra explains 'How Scientists Solved the Mystery of a 300-Year-Old Megaquake'. It's also inspired a multi-year conversation between Infidel753, who lives in the Pacific Northwest, and myself that's played out in the comments, which then gets recycled in the next post in the series. This post is no exception. Here's the exchange from January.

Infidel753: The Portland metro area has two million people and Seattle is even bigger. Even if 125,000 people were killed on the Oregon coast and a similar number on the Washington coast, I would still expect the death toll from structural collapses and fire in Portland and Seattle to be much larger.

Me: I looked up estimates of deaths, injuries, and homelessness from a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest and found these from Surviving Cascadia, themselves quoted from Oregon's Cascadia Rising Exercise document (PDF).

Coastal fatalities (Oregon): 4,800 (4,500 from tsumami, 300 from the earthquake itself)
I-5 corridor fatalities (Oregon): 400 (all from earthquake)
Coastal injuries (Oregon): 6,500 (5,000 from earthquake, 1,500 from tsunami)
I-5 corridor injuries (Oregon): 9,000 (all from earthquake)
Homelessness/needing shelter (Oregon): 520,000 (500,000 earthquake, 20,000 tsunami)
Coastal fatalities (Washington): 9,100 (9,000 from tsunami, 100 from earthquake)
I-5 corridor fatalities (Washington): 300-1,600 (300 earthquake, 0-1,300 tsunami)
Coastal injuries (Washington): 5,000 (2,000 earthquake, 3,000 tsunami)
I-5 corridor injuries (Washington): 7,400 (7,000 earthquake, 400 tsunami)
Homelessness/needing shelter (Washington): 415,000 (370,000 earthquake, 45,000 tsunami)

According to these estimates, more people will die from the earthquake along the I-5 corridor than along the coasts in both Oregon and Washington, but far more will die from the tsunami along the coasts alone (13,500) than the total that will die from the shaking throughout both states (1,100). So, no, the official estimates do not support your expectation that "the death toll from structural collapses and fire in Portland and Seattle to be much larger" than tsunami deaths on the Oregon and Washington coasts.

Infidel753: Very interesting links, thank you. I need to think further about this.

Me: Thanks for linking to the sources of these statistics and the blog as a whole in Link round-up for 18 January 2025. I'm glad to have informed you and your readers.

The statistics quoted are from a 2016 document, but the casualty numbers are higher than in the video, 43,800 total deaths and injuries in the document compared to "over 30,000 casualties" (total deaths and injuries) cited by Tina Dura of Virginia Tech. Surviving Cascadia also cites a 2022 study by Patrick Massey for FEMA that projects 1,100 earthquake-related fatalities, 13,000 tsunami-related fatalities, and 24,000 injured. The death count is substantially the same, but the number of injuries is less than the 27,900 predicted in the 2016 estimate, altough the 2022 report was for a February earthquake and tsunami. Casualties could be higher during the peak of tourist season. Cascadia Rising didn't list a dollar amount, but I can believe the video's estimate of $81 billion dollars of damage.

On the other hand, Luke Hanst of Portland State University added up to 2,500 deaths from toxic gas exposure resulting from burning fuel and chemical storage tanks and hundreds of thousands of people affected, adding tens of thousands of injuries. Even adding the 2,500 deaths to the 400 from the earthquake listed above for Oregon's I-5 corridor would not push it above the 4,800 deaths expected along Oregon's coast, but it does make the risk more even as well as much higher along the interior.

The video added two items of scientific interest, the effects of liquefaction and climate change. I make a big deal of the former when I lecture about earthquakes, especially the 1964 Alaska Good Friday earthquake. I might show this video to my geology students just to reinforce the point. Climate change will make the subsidence along the coast, which the video in January's post showed happening in 1700, even worse.

Finally, this isn't the first time Maiya May has described pro-social behavior in the aftermath of disaster. That might have been in PBS Terra's 'Weathered' asks 'Do You Need a Gun to Survive the Next Disaster?'

For what it's worth, I've seen similar, if not the same, findings about lower crime rates and increased cooperation after natural disasters and wrote about them five years ago in Seeker/DNews is optimistic about how people would behave during the apocalypse. As I wrote then, "that's good news, even if it might not be good entertainment."

Still good news.

That concludes the latest installment in this series. Stay tuned for the first Sunday entertainment feature of July. Awards shows!

'Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal' and 'The Truth vs. Alex Jones' lead nominees for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary

Happy June and happy Sunday! As I promised yesterday, I'm kicking off the month by examining the nominees for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary as the Sunday entertainment feature because Alex Jones is as much an entertainment story as he is a legal one.

The American Experience episode "Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal" earned three nominations at the News & Doc Emmy Awards and technically leads The Truth vs. Alex Jones with two nominations, but the situation mirrors the field for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary because The Truth vs. Alex Jones's other nomination is for Best Documentary, which balances out "Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal" earning nominations for Outstanding Writing – Documentary and Outstanding Direction – Documentary in my handicapping, so both are tied in my book. The other nominees in this category, Cult Massacre: One Day In Jonestown, Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter, and Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer, have only this one nomination.

I'm going through the nominee's trailers in the order above, beginning with POISONED GROUND: THE TRAGEDY AT LOVE CANAL | Trailer | American Experience | PBS.

In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal, a working-class neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, discovered that their homes, schools and playgrounds were built on top of a former chemical waste dump, which was now leaking toxic substances and wreaking havoc on their health. Through interviews with many of the extraordinary housewives turned activists, the film shows how they effectively challenged those in power, forced America to reckon with the human cost of unregulated industry, and created a grassroots movement that galvanized the landmark Superfund Bill.

POISONED GROUND: THE TRAGEDY AT LOVE CANAL tells the dramatic and inspiring story of the ordinary women who fought against overwhelming odds for the health and safety of their families.

When I first started teaching environmental science, one of the lab exercises was to watch a video about Love Canal and fill out a worksheet. That assignment disappeared the next time I taught the class, but the memory stuck with me. I'm too close to the end of my career and the actual episode is a touch too long to show in class, but I will definitely recommend this to my students for extra credit. Welcome to blogging as professional development.

Next, The Truth vs. Alex Jones | Official Trailer | HBO.

#TheTruthVsAlexJones chronicles the landmark defamation trials brought by Sandy Hook parents against Alex Jones.

Watching that makes me dislike Jones even more than when I gave him an honorary Kenny McCormick Memorial Medal for losing at least five accounts because of abuse. If this documentary wins an Emmy or two, it would make for a bookend to Sandy Hook Promise winning two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Commercial. I'd enjoy that.

I continue with the nominees that have just this one nomination with Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown | Official Trailer | Hulu.

Survivors and eyewitnesses tell the immersive story of Jim Jones' idealistic organization's final hours that spiraled into a mass casualty event. Watch Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown on Hulu!

Connecting this documentary to 9/11: One Day in America indicates both its pedigree and how this could easily have been a nominee for Outstanding Historical Documentary (same with "Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal"). Doing so would have put it in direct competition with Tsunami: Race Against Time, also by the same team, and I don't think they, Hulu, and National Geographic would have appreciated that. It's better off here, although I'd be surprised if that allows it to win this category.

It seems that no documentary category would be complete without a Netflix nominee, and Into The Fire: The Lost Daughter | Official Trailer | Netflix confirms my feeling.

A mother discovers the daughter she gave up for adoption many years ago has disappeared—and she will stop at nothing to find her. INTO THE FIRE: THE LOST DAUGHTER, directed by Ryan White and produced by Charlize Theron, comes to Netflix September 12.

"[P]roduced by Charlize Theron" — Theron is no stranger to true crime, having won an Oscar for portraying serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster.

The final trailer today is Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer | Official Trailer | Hulu.

To stop serial killers you need to think like one. Follow FBI specialist Dr. Ann Burgess as she explores the minds of notorious murderers in the new series Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer, premiering on July 11.

From award-winning executive producers Dakota and Elle Fanning and critically acclaimed collaborators comes “Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer,” a fascinating new perspective on the woman whose crime hunting innovations changed history. To stop serial killers, psychiatric nurse and professor Dr. Ann Burgess must first learn to think like one. With unprecedented access to the mastermind behind the development of modern serial-killer profiling, the series tells Burgess’ tenacious story and her compassion for victims which puts her at the center of America’s most infamous true-crime cases. From the widely known Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy to lesser-known cases like the Ski Mask Rapist, Burgess investigates and studies the damaged psyches of victims and their attackers, putting two halves of the same story together to catch a killer. Largely an unsung heroine until now, Dr.Burgess impacted not only the FBI, she also radically championed the plight of women in America.

As a fan of the prematurely canceled Mindhunter and run extended on streaming Criminal Minds, I'm glad to see the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Units receiving the documentary treatment they deserve. Also, Dakota Fanning is familiar with historical crime, having played one of the detectives in The Alienist, while her sister Elle, better known for playing Catherine the Great in The Great, also portrayed a defendant in a movie about true crime, The Girl from Plainville. Together, that puts them on the same level as Charlize Theron. Those credentials might have impressed the Television Academy if their documentaries had been nominated at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, but I'm not so sure they will be enough to convince the documentarians and journalists here. As I usually write when I cover awards shows, electorates matter.

Time to recycle what I last wrote in 'The Grab' leads both Outstanding Investigative Documentary and Best Documentary at the News & Doc Emmy Awards.

Now to re-examine the nominees for Best Documentary, which I first covered in 'King Coal' vs. 'Hollywood Black' and 'Madu' for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary at the News & Doc Emmy Awards.

For the first time in this series, I'm examining the nominees for Best Documentary. I've been holding off because the category has nine nominees this year. The Grab leads with four nominations, followed by American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders and Mammals with three each, Hollywood Black, The Sixth, and The Truth vs. Alex Jones, all with two, and The Commandant's Shadow, Queendom, and The Sing Sing Chronicles with just this one. The Grab and American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders are facing off for Outstanding Investigative Documentary, The Sixth leads the nominees for Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary, The Truth vs. Alex Jones is contending with Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary, and Mammals leads the rest of the field without a subject area nomination. That's four more opportunities to examine the nominees, after which I'll make my call.

Right now, I have The Grab in first, but I'm not making a final call until I write about the rest of the nominees.

I still think The Grab is first, but I'll change or solidify my choice after I write about Mammals.

Follow over the jump for the craft categories in which Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal earned nominations.

'Holy Smokes' and other comedy for Easter on 420 Day

I'm not the only one wishing a hoppy Easter on 4/20. Stephen Colbert did as well in Thursday night's monologue, Happy Easter And 4/20 | The Trump Whisperer | We Found Aliens! | Was Blue Origin Space Flight Faked?.

Whoever came up with our Easter traditions must have been really stoned, Italy’s new prime minister paid a visit to the White House, scientists may have discovered living organisms on a distant planet, and idiots online are insisting that Gayle King and Katy Perry didn’t really go to space.

Being stoned has little to do with our Easter traditions conflicting with each other. GaudyMarko explained in a comment.

Fun fact but Easter used to be a pagan holiday that celebrated the spring equinox and fertility before it got rebranded as a christian holiday. The rabbits, eggs, and even the name are all cultural reminants that predate christian influences. Hence the weird mismatch in themes.

Trueflights reinforced the point.

To be fair, most of the traditional Easter symbolism was stolen from the Pagan fertility holiday that happens around the same time. That is why you have bunnies (who reproduce quickly), chocolate (which is an aphrodisiac), and eggs (another fertility symbol).

This sounds familiar, as something similar happened with Christmas trees.

One part of the monologue that the video description missed involved Hoover Cleveland's proposed budget cutting FDA inspectors and NIH and CDC research. Three commenters weighed in on both. First, PC-kd7dj wrote, "No food inspection in U.S.? Now that should get other countries to increase food imports from us :_D" The other two reacted to the clip of RFK Jr. AlliePetty wrote, "That clip of RFK Jr talking about taking LSD just so he can see dinosaurs would be sufficient evidence against him to have kept him from becoming a cabinet member in any normal administration..." Too bad this is not a normal administration. Finally, SuperNov4 spoke for me with "I really need a warning before the rfk slaps on the screen, it's like nails on a chalkboard. What he says and how he speaks it's all garbage." I second that emotion.

Stephen celebrated Easter earlier in Wednesday night's First Drafts: Easter 2025 with Evie Colbert.

The fabulous Evie McGee Colbert stops by The Late Show to help Stephen select the perfect greeting card for Easter.

I should watch more "First Drafts" videos; they're cute, even when they're talking about death.

I'm returning to Thursday night's show for Meanwhile… Fatty Tuna | Drugs In The Water | Roman Tax Cheats | Lab-Grown Chicken Nuggets.

Meanwhile… A new machine can tell how much fat is in tuna meat, wild salmon exposed to anxiety drugs took more risks, ancient Romans fed tax evaders to leopards, and scientists grew real “chicken” meat in a lab.

Science, animals, and more drugs! Also, the Webby Awards qualify today's post as the Sunday entertainment feature. I love awards shows!

I close with Trump Easter 2025 Cold Open - SNL.

Jesus Christ (Mikey Day) and his disciples (Kenan Thompson, Andrew Dismukes, Sarah Sherman, Ego Nwodim, Emil Wakim, Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow, Jane Wickline) get interrupted by President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) during the cleansing of the Temple.

That made a worthy third part of the trilogy that began with James Austin Johnson's 'Trump' hijacks the Last Supper on 'SNL' for Easter and continued with 'Trump' hijacks the Resurrection to sell Bibles on 'SNL' for Easter.  That written, I'm not sure I want to see a part four.

That's a wrap for today's double holiday celebration. I don't know what I'm writing about tomorrow, so stay tuned to find out.

PBS Terra asks 'Save the Planet? In THIS Economy? Pffft' for an Earth Month Throwback Thursday

Happy Throwback Thursday! For today's retrospective, I'm finishing the series of Earth Month videos from PBS Terra I featured in For Earth Day, PBS Terra asks 'Stop Saving the Planet?' Change the world instead and today's featured post, PBS Terra explains 'How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You)' by sharing Save the Planet? In THIS Economy? Pffft.

We often hear industry and political leaders talk about how we need to balance the economy with the environment. The thinking goes something like this: environmental destruction is necessary to earn a living and make the things we need. But is this really true? Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant explores how we can approach the economy and the environment differently.

I begin my reaction by recycling two passages from the first post in the series.

This video reinforces a point I've been making since the first year of the blog and even before that in my environmental science classes: "economy is dependent on society, which is in turn dependent on the environment. Without an environment, there is no society. Without a society, there is no economy."
...
I think the system needs to be reformed; the status quo is unsustainable, while scrapping our food, energy, and economic systems and starting over would be too disruptive.

This video provides an idea of how those reforms could work. It's also one I could show my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant also pointed out the inequitable distribution of both harms and benefits from economic activity using the example of the port district of Wilmington in Los Angeles, which I can add as an example of environmental racism. What struck me as hard as the life expectancy of residents of the port neighborhoods of San Pedro, Wilmington, and West Long Beach being eight years lower than Los Angeles County as a whole is that more people died from air pollution in L.A. County than from traffic accidents and crime combined. Yikes! Am I glad I moved out of there!

Follow over the jump for how today's top post earned its page views.

Bill Maher's 'New Rule: The Great Garbage Election' plus the EMA Awards winners

I concluded Company Man asks 'The Decline of TGI Fridays...What Happened?' A tale of the Retail Apocalypse by promising "a follow-up to John Oliver on corn for National Food Day about the winners of the Environmental Media Association (EMA) Awards." As I wrote last month "It's between Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Real Time with Bill Maher [for Variety Series]. I'm rooting for Oliver over Maher, but both are HBO series, so HBO wins no matter what." I got my wish — Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won — so I'm featuring last night's New Rule: The Great Garbage Election | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) as consolation.

Here’s the thing: there actually is an island of garbage in the ocean – but the only person who mentioned it during the whole campaign was Trump's insult comic.

I've been writing about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and plastic pollution for more than a decade, most recently in PBS NewsHour and SciShow explain the difficulties of recycling plastic and plastic pollution and SciShow and Wild Hope explain 'How to Save the World from Plastic', so I'm singing in the choir Bill is preaching to. I hope my readers have been listening (reading) to both Bill and me. I expect the EMA listened; they might just nominate this segment for the Variety Series category next year.

Follow over the jump for the winners of the EMA Awards as a bonus entertainment feature.

John Oliver on corn for National Food Day

Happy National Food Day! I'm celebrating today by sharing Corn: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).

John Oliver discusses the financial and environmental impact of corn in the U.S., and whether or not he really knows what Pearl Harbor is.

I chose this video in part because this episode is nominated for Variety Series at the Environmental Media Association (EMA) Awards. It's between Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Real Time with Bill Maher. I'm rooting for Oliver over Maher, but both are HBO series, so HBO wins no matter what.

I also picked this because corn has been a major topic of my National Food Day series, going back ten years to 2014's Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet and most recently in My students are watching 'King Corn' for extra credit on National Food Day 2020. Oliver used clips from King Corn in this segment.

Normally, I'd answer the corn questions from the Food, Inc. worksheet, but I did that ten years ago, so I'm not doing it again. Instead, I tell my students that corn, along with E. coli, can be used for examples of three of Commoner's Laws, everything is connected to everything else, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and everything must go somewhere. Excess fertilizer washing off of corn fields causing dead zones works for all three.

While I've been skeptical about corn for fuel since the first year of the blog, I'm even more doubtful about it now. Seeing that it is the number one use of dense corn, although not the majority, is something I suspected but now know for sure. That's a statistic I can tell my students. Also, I did not know that growing corn for fuel has a larger carbon footprint than the equivalent amount of gasoline. It's a good day when I learn something new, and that makes today a good day, even if it's about something bad for the environment.

That concludes today's holiday entry. Stay tuned as I return to spooky season all the way to Day of the Dead.

SciShow and Wild Hope explain 'How to Save the World from Plastic'

I'm returning to topics that will be good to share in October with SciShow explaining How to Save the World from Plastic.

This video was inspired by the episode from Wild Hope: The Great Ocean Cleanup. Watch that episode now, and many more from Wild Hope, right here on YouTube – or follow @wildhopetv on Instagram to discover countless more stories of changemakers working to restore biodiversity around the globe. Change is closer than you think.

We've all heard about microplastics, but where do they come from? And what can we do about ocean plastics? We'll follow a single water bottle on its journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and beyond.

Hosted by: Stefan Chin

It was time for an update on plastic pollution since PBS NewsHour and SciShow explain the difficulties of recycling plastic and plastic pollution and SciShow provided it.

There's more to the story, so I'm embedding the episode Stefan Chin and SciShow referred to, Stopping Ocean Plastic Pollution at its Source | WILD HOPE from Nature on PBS.

Inventor Boyan Slat is on a mission to rid oceans of plastic. His team at The Ocean Cleanup designs and deploys systems that pull trash from the open ocean. Now, he’s stopping the pollution at its source: rivers where plastic is easier to catch, like those in Kingston Harbor, Jamaica.

Each year an estimated four million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans, killing thousands of marine creatures and accumulating up the food chain. The plastic gathers in five massive ocean gyres, the largest of which, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, holds 87,000 tons of trash. After years of research, The Ocean Cleanup has created a system that removes 7000 kilograms of trash from the sea every day and a half; the team aims to remove 90% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 2040.

But plastics keep flowing into the ocean, largely from the world’s polluted rivers. In Jamaica, Boyan’s team has teamed up with Alecia Beaufort and a local group cleaning up their waterways. Together, they’ve deployed a new system to trap plastic at the source as it flows downriver during a storm. Their success has inspired others to join the effort, creating a virtuous cycle of citizen action.

While I thought SciShow's video to be informative, I felt Wild Hope's video to be inspiring. Both thought and emotion are necessary for people to act, so I'm glad I found both videos to inspire myself and readers to act.

Since plastic pollution is as much a problem for rivers as it is for oceans, consider today's post to be a late celebration of World Rivers Day.

Every year on the fourth Sunday in September, World Rivers Day highlights the many values of rivers and streams. It’s also a day to encourage the improved stewardship of rivers around the world.

Here's to remembering to celebrate World Rivers Day on time next year. That shouldn't be difficult, as it will fall on a day special to me.

That's a wrap for today's topic. Stay tuned for another entry worth sharing in October tomorrow.

Vox asks 'Can Paris fix its poop problem before the Olympics?'

The Olympic Games begin in Paris today, so I'm taking a break from both the Emmy nominees and working the eye of Project 2025, sometimes simultaneously, to feature Vox asking Can Paris fix its poop problem before the Olympics?

A key promise in Paris’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics was that its famous river, the Seine, would be cleaned up in time to host open water swimming events: the triathlon, para triathlon, and marathon swimming. But swimming has been banned in the Seine for a century because the Paris sewer system is designed to dump wastewater into the river during heavy rain, when the sewers get overwhelmed by stormwater.

When that happens, levels of E. coli, a bacteria associated with fecal matter, spike in the river, making it too contaminated to swim in. In order to make good on its promise to clean the river, Paris officials took on a $1.5 billion USD infrastructure project that includes a massive underground tank and tunnel system meant to hold excess sewage during heavy rain and prevent further contamination of the Seine.

Water quality testing will be done daily ahead of the Olympic games this summer, and Paris officials are hopeful their ambitious plan to host swimming in the famously polluted river will succeed.

I hope the answer was yes.

I'm about to lecture on sewage treatment Monday night, so I'm considering showing this video to my environmental science class as a timely example of why the topic is relevant. The only concern I have is the BetterHelp promotion in the middle. Nearly every comment on the video complained about it, so I'll have to skip past it. I had no idea how many people dislike BetterHelp!

I might return to Olympics-related posts while the Games take place, but probably not tomorrow; I have Emmy nominations penciled in. Stay tuned.

Vox explains 'The lies that sell fast fashion'

I've written about fast fashion mostly as a tale of the Retail Apocalypse starring Forever 21, although I have mentioned its environmental costs along the way. Vox gave me an opportunity to revisit fast fashion's externalities earlier this month when the channel uploaded The lies that sell fast fashion.

You deserve better than Shein.
...
There are countless articles and videos breaking down the abysmal labor practices, horrifying environmental toll, and overall mountain of waste produced by the fast fashion industry. Activists and even just large swaths of the general public have been raising the alarm about this for well over a decade, but it hasn’t stopped the rise of some of the worst offenders in the industry. For example, the ultra-fast fashion brand Shein has skyrocketed in value over the past five years largely due to their marketing success on TikTok. A lot of us know that fast fashion is bad, but the only way companies like Shein still thrive is if we convince ourselves otherwise and hit “add to cart” anyway. So why do we do it?

The answer is that e-commerce has completely warped our view of what items should cost and how long they should last (this includes and extends to our obsession with Amazon and two-day shipping). We’re moving through trends at an unprecedented pace and it’s doomed to get worse if we don’t adjust our buying habits and learn to slow down. Consumers are being manipulated, but we can do better.

I made a pessimistic assessment five years ago that "as an environmentalist, I probably should be more opposed to fast fashion than I am" and predicted "until Americans, especially young women, change their fashion tastes, they will just buy fast fashion online..." I have become more opposed to fast fashion and Americans have apparently accelerated their acquisition of cheap clothing, a trend being pushed by new chains I hadn't even heard of then, Shein and Temu, and haven't mentioned until now, through a social media platform, TikTok, I wouldn't mention until 2020. Then, I was concerned about TikTok's capacity to monitor users on behalf of China and its ability to misinform, which are why I don't use it, despite its promotion of dance, a phenomenon I can watch on YouTube shorts, thank you very much. I didn't think enough about it as an advertising medium affecting Americans' shopping habits beyond convincing young people to shop local. Now I am. That's another reason to be suspicious of the platform.

That's it for today's more-or-less evergreen post for Earth Month (if TikTok actually is blocked in the U.S., I expect most of its users will migrate to YouTube shorts, including the shopping influencers, so the issues will just move to a new platform). Stay tuned for the return of more timely topics, like Donald Trump's trial in New York. I've been ignoring that and postponing my retrospective of the most read entries featuring late night talk show hosts. It's time to cover both. A topical Throwback Tuesday tomorrow!

PBS Terra explains 'How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You)'

I told my readers "I'm sure PBS Terra will upload more in this series for Earth Month. Watch for me to share upcoming episodes here" at the end of For Earth Day, PBS Terra asks 'Stop Saving the Planet?' Change the world instead. As promised, here is the next episode, How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You).

Recycling has been the gold standard for fighting pollution for decades. But most plastics can’t be recycled and the companies that push for recycling are the ones often generating the most emissions and waste in the first place. Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant looks at how we have been told to “reduce, reuse, recycle” to shift the responsibility from companies to the individual.

This makes up for the unpleasant surprise I wrote about to open 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' returns after winning two Emmy Awards with 'A History of Chuck E. Cheese,' a tale of the Retail Apocalypse.

I found that the video I wanted to feature today, Plastic Recycling is a Myth – Here’s How We Fix That, had playback on other sites disabled by PBS Terra. Shoot! I was looking forward to revisiting the plastic questions from Treasures of the Earth: Power.

I ended up examining those questions in PBS NewsHour and SciShow explain the difficulties of recycling plastic and plastic pollution.

The ubiquity of plastic is one of the topics I ask my students in the Worksheet for 'Treasures of the Earth: Power', which I'm showing this week. Here are two of the questions:

15. What uses are there for plastic? Name five uses or products.

The video lists cosmetic cases, chairs, phones, clothes, and toilet seats, or if it doesn't, I'll accept them as answers. The video shows lots more, including bottles and bags.

16. Why is plastic a challenge for disposal?

The video says that plastic doesn't break down and burning it creates greenhouse gases. In the way paper decomposes, it doesn't, although it does break down physically. Students also point out that the sheer variety of plastic complicates recycling. That's the point of the second video above, but it's not part of "Treasures of the Earth: Power." Still, it's true.

Students can also use plastic as an example of some of Commoner's Laws, Everything is connected to everything else, everything must go somewhere (there is no away), and there is no free lunch along with climate change.

This concludes today's episode of stories I tell my students.

Since I plan on recommending this series of videos to my students, it also makes this an episode of blogging as professional development. Yay, I finally got to write the post I wanted in February, when PBS Terra disallowing embedding of the Far Out video frustrated me!

Stay tuned for a Sunday entertainment feature for National Superhero Day. Superhero winners at the Critics Choice Super Awards Super Awards Awards, anyone?

For Earth Day, PBS Terra asks 'Stop Saving the Planet?' Change the world instead

Happy Earth Day! Like last year, I'm observing today with a series of videos about fighting climate change, this time from PBS Terra. These take a more heterodox approach, as exemplified by the title of the series, Why It's Time to Stop Saving the Planet*.

We care about the planet. But what if it's time to stop "saving it"?

Western cultures — and even some climate scientists and sustainability advocates — often share the idea that there is the “natural world” and the “human world.” The natural world is seen as pristine and untouched, while the human world is chaotic and ever changing. But all living things change the world around them in order to build homes, eat, drink and move around. In this first episode, join host Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D., as she explores how humans can think differently about the way we change the environments around us, how we can do it better, and why doing so could be a key foundation for addressing climate change.

Based on the Jenny Price book "Stop Saving the Planet!"

This video reinforces a point I've been making since the first year of the blog and even before that in my environmental science classes: "economy is dependent on society, which is in turn dependent on the environment. Without an environment, there is no society. Without a society, there is no economy." I asked my students to identify a similar statement in my worksheet for Chasing Ice, which they watched two weeks ago: "What does Balog say about the relationship between nature and civilization?" The answer is that the two are interconnected and civilization depends on nature. I hope my students retain that.

Follow over the jump for the other three videos in the series so far.

CityNerd explains 'All the Ways Car Dependency Is Wrecking Us'

I told my readers to "Stay tuned for a regular post" and I'm delivering with Ray Delahanty as CityNerd explaining All the Ways Car Dependency Is Wrecking Us.

By popular demand -- a comprehensive review of all the ways car dependency destroys our communities, our health, and our planet. With gratuitous commentary by your host!

It looks like I have to update the headline statistic in U.S. traffic deaths reached nearly 43,000 in 2021, the most in 16 years, a driving update, which I had telling my students to make a point. The actual number is 4,000 higher, 46,980. They would be even more shocked if I told them more than one million people die every year in car crashes, including collisions with pedestrians, worldwide. Yikes! Also, I make that comparison between the safety of cars and commercial airlines every year as an analogy for the day-to-day safety of coal-fired power plants and nuclear plants. Both commercial air travel and nuclear power plants are much safer than personal automobile travel and coal-powered plants, even accounting for Boeing's current problems and meltdowns. Nuclear waste? We haven't got there yet.

The rest of the list is just as enlightening and I plan on sharing the highlights as stories I tell my students. I hope they learn them, too. As for me, it's always a good day when I learn something new and I learned a lot from this video.

PBS NewsHour and SciShow explain the difficulties of recycling plastic and plastic pollution

I'm returning to another evergreen topic on the last day of the blogging year, plastic. I begin with PBS NewsHour reporting The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades, new report finds.

The world produces an average of 430 million metric tons of plastic each year. The United States alone produces tens of millions of tons of plastic waste annually. Yet on average, only about 5 to 6 percent of plastic in the U.S. is recycled. NPR correspondent Michael Copley joins Ali Rogin to discuss a new report on the plastic industry’s tactics to push recycling and avoid regulation.

This is looking like what the fossil fuel industry said in private about climate change and the tobacco industry about lung cancer, both of which turned into major scandals and legal actions. It parallels the story about Keep America Beautiful told in Adam Ruins Going Green: Student Sustainability Video Festival 79 and Vox on going green by reducing waste for Earth Day 2018, that it began as a corporate effort to shift responsibility for waste from the companies that made products to the consumers that used them and disposed of them. That worked for decades, but people are starting to catch on, thanks to reporting like this and the Emmy-winning "Plastic Time Bomb."

I'm a scientist and educator, as well as an activist, so I'm sharing SciShow explaining Why We're So Bad at Recycling Plastic.

Plastic is quickly becoming a problem and we're eager to point fingers, but honestly, the reason there's so much plastic everywhere isn't just because of human negligence.

Hosted by: Stefan Chin

So that's the science explaining the difficulties of plastic recycling and disposal. The result is that a lot of plastic can't be recycled and the rest isn't just landfilled or incinerated, but becomes pollution. SciShow just uploaded a video about how that reaches the literal ends of the Earth, The Arctic Is Drowning in Plastic.

Many people picture the Arctic as a pristine icy wilderness. But when it comes to microplastics, it's one of the most polluted places on Eart[h.]

Hosted by: Reid Reimers (he/him)

It's not just the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Plastic is everywhere.

The ubiquity of plastic is one of the topics I ask my students in the Worksheet for 'Treasures of the Earth: Power', which I'm showing this week. Here are two of the questions:

15. What uses are there for plastic? Name five uses or products.

The video lists cosmetic cases, chairs, phones, clothes, and toilet seats, or if it doesn't, I'll accept them as answers. The video shows lots more, including bottles and bags.

16. Why is plastic a challenge for disposal?

The video says that plastic doesn't break down and burning it creates greenhouse gases. In the way paper decomposes, it doesn't, although it does break down physically. Students also point out that the sheer variety of plastic complicates recycling. That's the point of the second video above, but it's not part of "Treasures of the Earth: Power." Still, it's true.

Students can also use plastic as an example of some of Commoner's Laws, Everything is connected to everything else, everything must go somewhere (there is no away), and there is no free lunch along with climate change.

This concludes today's episode of stories I tell my students. Stay tuned for Happy International Day of Nowruz and the 13th birthday of Crazy Eddie's Motie News on tomorrow and World Water Day on Friday. My blog will be a teenager!