First Carbon Positive Hotel in America

🌎 NOAA and the Climate Mayors

NOAA has recently partnered with the Climate Mayors, a bipartisan network of over 350 mayors who are committed to taking climate action in their communities. Together, they announced a new memorandum of understanding that advances collaborative efforts to help cities across the nation better prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change. The agreement will accelerate the use of climate information and expertise at the local level and ensure that NOAA’s world-class climate science and tools are easy for local leaders across the country to access, understand, and use. NOAA will provide climate decision support services to help communities prepare and make decisions when faced with high-impact weather or climate-related events. Climate Mayors will highlight adaptation successes, contribute to case studies and lessons learned, and encourage its members to participate in monitoring and evaluation efforts.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

🏨 First Carbon Positive Hotel in America

Denver, Colorado will soon have what promises to be the first carbon positive hotel in America. The hotel is set to open in mid-October and will have 265 rooms and be climate-conscious. The hotel’s creators have promised to overcompensate for their emissions by a factor of 400% to 500% through a combination of low-carbon construction, eco-friendly operations, and a huge tree planting campaign throughout Colorado. The creators say they are using recycled materials, low-carbon concrete, and only 100% renewable energy through the construction of the building. They go even further to say the hotel will have no on-site parking. 100% of the food products they will offer will be sourced locally, and all food waste will be turned into compost and returned to the same farms. For each guest that stays at the hotel, they will plant one spruce tree in Colorado. They’ve already planted 70,000 spruce trees to offset emissions accrued in the building process, with another 20,000 to be planted this year.

Josiah Hesse, The Guardian

🐟 Great Lakes Whitefish Struggle to Survive

Juvenile whitefish numbers are plummeting in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Whitefish rely on winter ice cover to lay eggs on shallow reefs, but warming temperatures have caused ice cover to decline. Since the 1970s, roughly a 5% overall average decline in ice cover has taken place each decade, with this year being the lowest ever on record at 5.3% ice cover across the Great Lakes. The gradual decline of ice cover is reducing protective cover and exposing whitefish eggs to increased wave energy. Global climate warming has increased deep water temperature and has also increased the frequency of extreme weather, both of which have negatively impacted the whitefish population. The warmer waters have also caused invasive species to colonize in the lakes, resulting in a huge loss of essential food which sustains the fish population. The whitefish population has declined by up to 60% to 80% in some areas.

Garret Ellison and Sheri McWhirter, MLive