The Big Story 

Some cities across the country chose to swap traditional fireworks for sparkly, drone-lit skies this Fourth of July — hoping to quash the excess air pollution produced by a centuries-old American tradition.  

© AP

Setting off fireworks is woven into the fabric of U.S. history, with the first such spectacle occurring at Philadelphia’s inaugural Independence Day festivities in 1777.

But amid growing concerns about air quality, supply chains and wildfires, certain cities — including several in the U.S. West — have opted to part with tradition for the foreseeable future, The New York Times reported.

Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boulder, Colo., were among those to swap fireworks for LED aerial displays this year.

Lake Tahoe, Calif., held its second annual drone show on Tuesday. The San Diego communities of Ocean Beach and La Jolla also opted for an LED spectacle over fireworks, as did North Richland Hills in Texas. 

“Less risk of fire, less risk of damage, less risk of injury," Rick Boss, president of Sky Elements Drone Shows, which ran the North Richland Hills event, told CBS News.

While most of this shift has thus far taken place in the wildfire-prone U.S. West, a drone-lit Statue of Liberty took over New York City skies just prior to the annual firework display, local station Fox 5 reported.  

Fireworks lead to a surge of two types of particulate pollution: larger particles known as PM 10 and fine particles called PM 2.5 — with diameters of 10 microns or less and 2.5 microns or less, respectively.  

Exposure to PM 2.5, which is about one-thirtieth of the width of a human hair, can infiltrate both the human bloodstream and the lungs, while PM 10 can trigger asthma attacks and cause other respiratory issues.

But particulates are far from the only pollutants associated with fireworks, Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality warned.  

Other contaminants include sulfur and potassium in the gunpowder that fuels them, as well as the heavy metals that enable “the explosions of color,” the agency stated. 

Salt Lake City held its event Saturday, ahead of Independence Day, part of “a proactive effort to combat the city’s high fire danger and to alleviate local air quality concerns,” a municipal press release stated.

“As temperatures rise and fire danger increases, we must be conscientious of both our air quality and the potential for wildfires,” Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall (D) said in a statement.

In Boulder, a bout of severe thunderstorms on Tuesday evening delayed the northern Colorado city’s inaugural spectacle, which was cut short but then resumed when weather risks tapered.  

Despite the inclement weather, photos published by The Daily Camera show a multicolored “1776” illuminating the foggy sky over the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field.

The switch from fireworks to drones occurred due to “a number of factors, including increased fire danger fueled by climate change,” a city press release announced ahead of the event.  

Meanwhile, Minneapolis opted for a laser display, since the technology has become easier to procure than fireworks in recent years.

While fireworks have long been a quintessential part of Fourth of July festivities, their use is by no means limited to the U.S — nor are attempts to cut air pollution by banning them. 

Such steps can be surprisingly effective. Scientists in China, for example, previously found Zhengzhou City’s firework prohibition policy led to “an obvious ‘peak-shaving’ effect during the traditional heavy pollution period” that coincides with the Spring Festival holiday.  The biggest effects were reductions in particulate matter pollution.  

Researchers in India, meanwhile, determined that firework-related emissions were “a significant contributor” to air pollution in Delhi during the four-day Diwali period celebrated each fall, and a 2010-21 study conducted in Augsburg, Germany, revealed a “drastic increase” in particulate matter concentrations on New Year’s Day, when firework displays are common across the country. 

Still, some acknowledge that ditching the displays may be hard in much of the U.S.

A Utah Department of Environmental Quality article noted that “for many people, the Fourth of July wouldn’t BE the Fourth of July without fireworks.”  

“But these pyrotechnic displays also produce high concentrations of smoke and particulates,” the agency stressed, warning such pollution not only harms air quality, but also poses a threat to human health.

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, we’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

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All About Tradition 

© Adobe stock

Anyone who has ever learned a new technique by watching someone perform it — in person or on a site like TikTok or YouTube — has taken part in a tradition that could be older than humanity itself. 

Young male orangutans — a species whose ancestors diverged from humans more than 12 million years ago — learn to exploit new environments by a very familiar means: watching the locals, according to a study published Wednesday in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 

The findings suggest that this use of social learning goes back to our common ancestor with the jungle-dwelling great apes. 

Portal to the past: The discovery sheds light on how humans mastered the unfathomably diverse range of ecosystems encountered in the long circuitous trek out of Africa. 

• "Over evolutionary time, being able to quickly adapt to novel environments by attending to crucial information from locals, likely provided individuals with a survival advantage," lead author Julia Mörchen, of Germany’s Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said in a statement. 
  
  
• The ability to learn from watching is "likely ancestral in our hominin lineage, reaching back at least between 12 and 14 million years to the last common ancestor we share with orangutans,” Mörchen added. 

See, then do: Young orangutans get their first education in foraging from their mothers, who teach them over a period of more than a dozen years to recognize and exploit at least 200 local food items.

• But social learning is a vital survival skill for young male orangutans, who enter adulthood via a difficult rite of passage.
  
  
• After adolescence, the teenage apes trek many miles from their native territory to find a home and community elsewhere. Young adult females, by contrast, tend to stay close to home, where they tend to remain affiliated with their father's band. 

The downside of biodiversity: The mountainous Indonesian rainforests where the apes live are some of the most biodiverse regions in the world. 
 

That 30-mile journey of involves traversing many different ecosystems — which can mean very different ranges of edible food some of which can only be harvested using specialized techniques. 

Peer to perform: To learn how to survive in their new homes, young male migrants carefully watch locals to learn new — and often labor-intensive — techniques of harvesting local bounty, the scientists found.

• This intensive "peering" behavior goes on for about two months. 
  
  
• The researchers concluded that this two-month period is about how long it takes the young males to learn a new skill.  

Big picture: The ancestors of orangutans split from the human line earlier than any other great ape.

Their display of this shared trait therefore suggests that the behavior predates the explosion of ancestral great apes into today’s diverse range of species, according to the study. 

• This commonality also may shed light on the circumstances that preceded that expansion. 
  
  
• As long as 14 million years ago, the scientists wrote, the environments that human ancestors lived in must have shaped migrants with "the general ability to harvest the benefits of cultural knowledge through social learning from locals." 

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The Big Story 

New wildfires have broken out across Canada this week, contributing to unhealthy air now choking Midwestern cities.

© The Associated Press

At least 30 new fires broke out across the country’s expansive forests on Tuesday, according to a Wednesday situation report from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC). 
 

That brings the total to nearly 500 active fires burning across Canada — more than 250 of them currently listed as out of control.  
 

Canada is in the midst of its worst fire season on record — plagued by blazes that have already consumed an unprecedented 29,000 square miles, an area nearly the size of South Carolina.  
 

To put those numbers in a different context, nearly 14 times as much Canadian land has burned up so far in 2023 as would burn in an entire average 21st-century year, according to CIFFC. 

The rash of uncontrolled fires is sending smoke billowing south and across some of the Midwest’s biggest cities, leaving them with some of the unhealthiest air in the world.  

As of press time on Wednesday, only the scorching, petroleum-choked metropolis of Dubai had worse air quality than Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis.  

For Canada, the fires are a national phenomenon, burning in every province and territory except for rainy, wind-swept Prince Edward Island, according to CIFFC.  

About 46 percent of the nearly 3,000 fires burning throughout Canada are spread across the heavily forested western provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

Another 16 percent (500 fires in total) are burning in the eastern province of Quebec — consuming more than a third of the total land that Canada has lost to fire this year. 

And these eastern blazes have had a wide range of consequences, such as disruptions to the region’s thriving gold mining industry, S&P Global reported. 

The air blowing south from Canada is unhealthy largely because of what it carries: masses of tiny, floating soot particles left over from the large-scale combustion happening in the nation’s forests. 

The biggest public health threat from the fires comes from fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5 — particles so small that they can cross into the bloodstream. The biggest PM 2.5 particles — which must have a diameter less than 2.5 microns — are about 30 times smaller than a human hair.  

Each of the three top contaminated Midwestern cities had PM 2.5 levels that were at least 15 times greater than concentrations deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to data from IQAir.  

Smoke from the fires has even crossed the Atlantic, where it has helped push Madrid to PM 2.5 levels more than four times greater than the WHO threshold. 

Stuck in smoky conditions? Building indoor air cleaners can help protect lungs and hearts, according to the California Air Resources Board, which has spent nearly a decade trying to keep people safe amid worsening smoke events. 

For those in need of faster and less expensive relief, the Environmental Protection Agency has a guide for how to create a simple-but-reliable DIY ‘clean room’. 

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, meanwhile, offers a video tutorial on how to build a freestanding, two- filter homemade air purifier using air filters and a couple box fans.  

You can keep up with the air quality news on TheHill.com.

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, we’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.

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To The Extreme

© iStock

Surging global temperatures are shifting would-be snowfall to rain — making mountain communities across the Northern Hemisphere more vulnerable to devastating landslides, floods and soil erosion, a new study has found.  

Rain replacing snow: Warmer weather — fueled by climate change — has long been expected to increase the volume of precipitation falling during extreme events, the study authors acknowledged. 

But the fraction of water falling as snow in mountainous regions has plunged, in favor of rain — which has the potential to trigger floods and other calamitous events, according to the study, published on Wednesday in Nature. 

A direct effect: “One quarter of the global population lives in or downstream from mountainous regions,” first author Mohammed Ombadi, of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in a statement.  

They are going to be directly affected by this risk,” Ombadi added.  

Quantifiable change: The Berkeley Laboratory scientists were able to quantify the shift in the results of their research.  

• For every degree-Celsius rise in global temperature, they calculated an average of 15 percent more rain at higher elevations.  

Which mountains are at greatest risk? While all of the mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere are incurring shifts from snow to rain, some are facing bigger threats than others, the researchers found.  

• Among the most vulnerable are the mountains of the North American Pacific, such as the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada and coastal ranges from Canada to Southern California. 
  
  
• Also at risk are the Himalayas and other high-latitude regions.  

Why these particular ranges? The scientists said that they are still working to understand why certain regions are under greater risk than others. 

• North American Pacific ranges may be more susceptible because a significant share of snowfall there “occurs at temperatures just below zero degrees Celsius,” Ombadi explained. 
  
  
• “The slightest change in air temperature will shift this snowfall to rainfall,” he added. 
  

What can be done? Ombadi expressed hopes that fellow scientists will use this distinction between snowfall and rainfall to help improve global climate models.  

• Civil engineers, meanwhile, could harness the data to prepare for extreme weather events, according to Ombadi.  
  
  
• Such information could contribute to the design of infrastructure capable of withstanding the negative effects of extreme weather, he added. 

A single degree means a lot: As countries strive to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, Ombadi urged them to consider “the linear relationship” between warming and rainfall.  

• “For instance, 1 degree [Celsius] of warming causes 15 percent more rain, while 3 degrees leads to a 45 percent increase in rainfall,” he said.  
  
  
• Ombadi emphasized the need to invest in technologies that could help reduce emissions, while also “preparing for the consequences of warming now.” 

Read more here.

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The Big Story 

After a landmark youth-led climate change trial reached its end on Tuesday afternoon, a Montana district court judge must now determine whether the state has violated the constitutional right of 16 young plaintiffs to a clean environment.

© Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP

In a closing argument, Attorney Nate Bellinger urged Judge Kathy Seeley to overturn a Montana law that forbids state agencies from considering environmental impacts when issuing permits for greenhouse gas releases, The Associated Press reported. 

Throughout the seven-day Held v Montana trial, the plaintiffs maintained that officials disregarded their constitutional right to a healthful and clean environment, by enabling companies to build and expand fossil fuel infrastructure, according to the AP.  

“The state of Montana comes before this court because of a pervasive systemic infringement of rights,” Bellinger said. 

The right in question is a Montana Constitution amendment adopted in 1972, which indicated that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” 

During the trial, plaintiffs said that they have been encountering longer wildfire seasons, as well as smoke-filled summers and dwindling rivers, Montana Public Radio reported.  

Bellinger argued that the state has exacerbated the crisis by enacting a 2023 law that barred state regulators from considering greenhouse gas releases when permitting energy projects, the NPR affiliate explained. 

Lawyers for the state spent only one day presenting their side, arguing that climate change is a global issue and that limiting emissions in Montana would not affect the plaintiffs’ lives, according to Montana Public Radio.  

“What we heard in plaintiff's case is not constitutional controversy, but rather a week-long airing of political grievances that probably belongs in the Legislature, not a court of law,” Montana Assistant Attorney General Michael Russell said.  

Heading into the trial, one legal expert questioned what it would take “to give teeth” to the 1972 constitutional provision in an analysis published by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.  

The plaintiffs would need to prove causal connections among the state’s actions, climate change and individual harms, wrote Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.  

“The trial will be a major stage for the nation to see contemporary climate attribution science, which links climate change to both slow onset changes in the environment and more immediate, short-term, extreme events,” Burger stated.  

An explanatory piece in Nature likewise described how “climate science will get its day in court.” 

Our Children’s Trust, the law firm representing the Montana youth, stressed in a press statement earlier this week that the plaintiffs are not seeking money.  

“They are asking the court to declare that Montana's fossil fuel energy policies and actions violate young people’s state constitutional rights,” the statement said.    

Whether that request will be fulfilled now lies in the hands of Seeley, the district court judge, who is expected to issue a decision within a few months, according to Montana Public Radio.  

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, we’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.

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Go Deeper 

© David Maddison via AP

Rising temperatures from climate change are unraveling the ecological webs that keep insect pests and their predators in balance. 

Small creatures, big implications: Such disruption could mean serious upheaval for future biodiversity and crop yields, according to a study published on Wednesday in Ecology Letters. 

Evolutionary tale: The study builds on a natural experiment dating back to the 1840s, when settlers began to introduce apple orchards to the native hardwood forests of New York’s Hudson Valley. 

Opportunity for a fly: Apples soon became a new potential food source for local flies that had previously fed on hawthorn fruit, a member of the pear family.  

As apples spread across the region in the early 19th Century — with big, crunchy and appealingly thornless fruit — some hawthorn flies jumped to the new crop.  

Evolution in action: This jump coincided with the publication by Charles Darwin and others of the theory of evolution, according to Thomas Powell, the lead author of the new study.   

• The entomologist who discovered the new apple flies wrote to Darwin about it "potentially being an example of the origin of species in real-time," said Powell, a professor of biology at Binghamton University. 
  
  
• That’s something modern research has confirmed. 

 A pest is born: Like their hawthorn-dependent ancestors had, apple flies lay eggs in their chosen fruit — and plague apple growers across the country.  

New experiment: Powell and his colleagues used these two closely related populations to predict potential impacts on insect communities as the atmosphere heats up and growing seasons shift. 

• The researchers raised populations of both flies under average conditions from the last 10 years — and under the hotter temperatures projected for the late 21st century. 
   
• Despite their close relationship, the two fly populations — and the wasp that is their main predator — experienced very different climate effects. 

What they found: The ancestral hawthorn fly population adapted best to the new conditions. 

The apple flies, by contrast, saw their far-future lifecycle thrown out of whack with their apple tree hosts, “making their survival tenuous,” the authors wrote. 

Lonely wasps: The predatory wasps that feed on the apple and hawthorn pests weren’t affected by the rising heat at all, scientists found — which meant they were now breeding out of sync with their prey. 

Dire consequences: If that prediction holds true, it could spell “dire consequences,” scientists concluded.  

• In addition to leading to an unchecked pest problem, such a difference could also impact the survival of the wasp species itself. 
  
  
• That would lead in turn to unknown impacts on other species in the food web that depend on it — or that it might eat instead. 

Falling behind: If such similar species had such different results from each other — as well as from one of their principal predators — researchers foresee a future of upheaval.  

“Widespread chaos:” If such divergent impacts are showing up in such closely related insect species, "we may see widespread chaos in the ecological timing of insect communities in the coming decades,” Powell added. 

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