1/ Last year, I became obsessed with a plastic cup. The cup was made via pyrolysis — a kind of chemical recycling I'd heard a lot about.

The plastics industry made pyrolysis sound magical. It could turn hard-to-recycle plastics into new plastic. So I tried to buy the cup… 2/ but couldn’t. The companies behind the cup didn’t answer detailed questions about the cup’s availability or how it was made.

The PR spin around pyrolysis made me think my used grocery bags and candy wrappers would soon be made into new products. So where were they?

After years of reporting on carbon offsets, I got a tip on biodiversity offsets.

The story took me to Guinea, where a World Bank Group-funded project left a trail of hunger, displaced families, decimated ecosystems and conditions ripe for infectious outbreaks. (📸@KFlynnNola) 1/ Biodiversity offsets involve ‘compensating’ for ecosystem damage. If your shopping mall rips up 20 acres of wetland, you can offset that by protecting or restoring 20+ acres of similar wetland elsewhere.

The Guinea offset is one of the most extreme examples…2/

1/ Barbara Weckesser moved to Pascagoula to retire.

Then came the dust and the fumes — horrible odors.

For 9+ years, she and her neighbors complained to the Mississippi environmental agency in charge of clean air: MDEQ.

Nothing changed. (THREAD — photos by @KFlynnNola) 2/ I started reporting on Pascagoula in June. One of my first calls was to Weckesser, founder of a grassroots concerned citizens group. Her neighborhood sits next to several large polluters, including a Chevron refinery and a shipyard.

1/ I've seen that a lot of you think rapid antigen tests can keep your Thanksgivings safe. But it’s not that simple. These tests have been known to give false positives AND false negatives. Doesn’t mean you can’t gain anything from them.

Here’s what you need to know: 2/ Antigen tests are faster + cheaper than lab-based PCR tests. They’re also less accurate. BUT: they’re good at catching people who are most likely to infect other people.

Tear gas is WAY more dangerous than the cops say. It can cause long-lasting harm, damages skin, seeps into bystanders’ homes and contaminates what it touches.

Calling it “nonlethal” ignores critical info. We are in the middle of a respiratory pandemic

What you need to know 👇 2/ Tear gas is *specifically designed* to cause pain. It can be 100,000x stronger than the sting from wasabi.

That’s according to @sejordt, a professor of anesthesiology at Duke University.

It’s particularly painful on skin and eyes. When inhaled, the pain makes people cough.

1/ So, some impt documents just came out...showing how @ExxonMobil believed, in *1991,* that managing climate change requires a $75/ton carbon tax.

climateliabilitynews.org/2019/12/03/exx…

Today they support a $40 tax.

I’ve spent 2019 covering carbon pricing. Here’s what this means (THREAD): 2/ Just so everybody's on the same page, this is how a carbon tax works:

Regulators force companies to pay for every ton of CO2 released, in hopes it’ll force them to cut emissions.

The docs that show what Exxon believed in 1991 are here:

documentcloud.org/documents/5015…

1/ My story today shows how oil + gas can exploit cap and trade (CA’s signature climate law).

I found a group of pastors who testified in a way that could have helped oil+gas industry at a cap-and-trade hearing. They didn’t know oil interests had *paid for their trip.* (THREAD) 2/ I had heard vaguely about these pastors from sources and other news articles, so I looked at lobbying records and visited two of the pastors, Oliver Buie and Jonathan Moseley Sr.

When I told them oil interests had backed their trip, they were shocked.

I’m an environment reporter @ProPublica, and fyi, the Amazon forest is STILL burning.

The # of fires went down, but the cause remains the same: deforestation fueled by beef+ soybean demand, as @yessfun explains. Let’s talk about what’s going on: THREAD
earther.gizmodo.com/fewer-fires-bu… 1/ 2/ These aren’t like the California wildfires—the Amazon is usually too humid to burn on its own. Humans are responsible: farmers/loggers cut down trees, pile them up and set them on fire. The fire can spread into nearby healthy forest, adding to the damage.