This Week on Earth: May 8-14
The northern lights visible above Northwestern’s campus Friday night. (Nick Rose/ION)
Northwestern
Are you one of the many students scrambling to assemble an outfit for Dillo Day? Are you trying to channel your “granola” aesthetic? A true nature-loving camper would avoid Shein and Zara! Fast fashion is a phenomenon in which low-quality clothing designed to chase trends is sold for cheap and typically discarded after a few uses. Events such as Dillo contribute to this trend by encouraging costumes, which are oftentimes too conspicuous or uncomfortable for regular wear.
So what’s wrong with fast fashion? First, the clothes are mostly manufactured in Southeast Asia, where wages are low and working conditions are poor in order to keep prices down. Fast fashion is also bad for the environment. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions. Moreover, fast fashion clothing is often made with polyester, a petroleum-derived fiber that takes 200 years to degrade.
Instead, go green for Camp Dillo by repurposing clothes you already have. This year’s festival is camping themed, so simply dust off (or leave it on for the aesthetic) those old khakis and high school T-shirts and you’re ready to go! If you must go shopping, try a thrift store. Remember, you don’t need new or flashy clothes to look your best.
Happy Dillo Day!
United States
Top diplomats from the U.S. and China just wrapped up two days of climate change discussions, according to senior State Department officials. They agreed to bolster cooperation across a variety of climate issues, including deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, global markets have been saturated with Chinese coal and solar panels, which the U.S. has blamed for undermining clean energy manufacturing worldwide.
Still, U.S. climate envoy John Podesta said that the talks were “in-depth and productive” despite recent geopolitical tensions between the two countries. China canceled climate meetings after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, but discussions resumed ahead of the U.N.’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai last year. Many major climate treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol, were negotiated at this annual conference.
The two superpowers are by far the world’s largest carbon dioxide polluters, but China emits almost twice as much as the U.S. does, at 12.7 billion metric tons every year to the U.S.’s 5.9 billion. It is important to note, however, that the U.S. and Europe were the highest emitters between 1750 and 2019. China’s emissions calculation also includes the carbon produced by U.S. manufacturing facilities in the country.
Germany
German police say they have stopped hundreds of demonstrators from storming a Tesla factory outside Berlin. The activists were protesting its planned expansion, which they argue will damage the local environment by clearing nearby forests and consuming precious water resources.
“It was a good day for activists. We saw a lot of police violence unfortunately,” said Ole Becker, a spokesperson for Disrupt, the group that organized the demonstration.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that activists are making a mistake by targeting electric vehicle (EV) makers, such as Tesla, rather than traditional car manufacturers. The production of an EV battery generates significantly more emissions than that of an entire gas car, but EVs consume less fossil fuels over extended use.